August garden tour slides

we will shortly have the slideshow from the august garden tour up and available for your viewing pleasure on the club's blogsite here, and on the club's facebook page.  thanks to our tour hosts Carol and Scott Wood, and thanks to club videographer Geoff Carson for the excellent sideshow.  as always, thanks to our club blogmeister Su Chism, and to Facebook page administrator Geoff Carson for their continuing efforts to educate and entertain us.

our september meeting will be indoors at Camden Grange, on the 14th at 7 p.m., so be sure to mark your appointment calendar.  

in this heat (99 degrees F. today), i hope your garden is thriving and staying wet.  i know it's traumatic to think beyond your next iced drink, but now is the time to plant short season (60 days or less) seedlings/starts for that autumn garden:  cabbage, kale, radishes, broccoli, lettuce, etc., will probably (?!) be ready to harvest before the first breath of winter.

be careful out there, jim

Garden club August tour!

We will be touring on Tuesday, the 10th of August, departing from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a 25 minute drive to a beautiful, huge garden near Wilderness Lake.  The garden is grown as a food producing project; lots of sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, even non-ornamental squash (still poisonous!), all to feed the gardener's family.  For those of you whose gardens have not been as successful as in past years due to our drought conditions, you won't want to miss this tour.  Please read this entire email for some important information concerning road conditions in the area we are visiting.

Since our last tour of this year will be a garden in the Fertile Valley area off of highway 2, it is important the tour convoy stays together.  To help facilitate a successful arrival, here is a heads-up of the route we'll be taking; we will drive north from the Grange, over Camden Gap and then turn left on Scotia Road to Highway 2, turning south toward Spokane. (At this point, I would tell you to watch for the Pend Oreille County "Fertile Valley Road" sign, but some reprobate recently stole it!)  Anyway, we will turn right onto Fertile Valley Road and proceed toward Wilderness Lake.  Wilderness Lake is a privately-owned lake, and the homes are in a gated community, so the gardener will meet us at the gate and convoy us back to her garden.  (Please be aware that the dirt/gravel roads are not up to even county road speeds (think Madison and Bridges road conditions on steroids but narrower) so we'll all cautiously drive around the corners and up the hills.  The driveway up to the gardener's home is steep and switch-backed (is that a word?), so some club members may want to carpool with a member driving an all-wheel or four-wheel car or truck.  Once at the top of the hill/driveway, please pull forward around the looping driveway so there is room for everyone to park.  Then gather in the driveway so we can open the meeting, make our presentation, and move to the garden as a group.

Should be a fun, final evening for the 2021 club garden touring season.  In September we will have a short, but appropriate, class and maybe an impromptu homegrown veggie competition for:  largest, weirdest, and most deeply disturbing vegetable and/or fruit.

See you this Tuesday at Camden Grange.

jim.