Our 2023 Spring gardening season is a little, ummm, confused; let’s use that word. This morning, we here at Rancho McGinty watched in wonder: thunder and lightning, hail, heavy rain, and thirty mile per hour winds, followed by afternoon sunshine, blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and 83 degrees Fahrenheit. Followed by a nighttime thunder and lightning display. Awesome, no doubt, but disconcerting when it comes to deciding whether (no pun intended) it’s safe to plant the tomatoe and pepper starts (for what it’s worth, we did).
If we want ripe, ready to harvest veggies this year, we’ll need to take a few chances, hence my gardening motto: “Plant early, plant often”. Meaning take a chance on a late frost and plant now, but be prepared to re-place that row of just-emerging baby greens. If all things work out, you will have a bumper crop of green beans, and if things go sour, you will at least have some/enough green beans.
Out in the garden, it’s safe to plant seeds or starts for these cold-hardy veggies: beets, carrots, chard, kohlrabi, cabbage, lettuce, mustard, collards, turnips, radish, spinach, onion sets, and peas.
Hopefully, you have already planted your seed potatoes, and if you use the hill and furrow method, keep hilling up those plants, to harvest even more spuds.
Remember that floating row cover (brand names include “Ree-May”, and “Agribon”) is your friend: heavy weight row cover will protect even frost-sensitive plants like tomatoes down to +26 degrees F., and during the Spring/Summer, row cover will help keep the beetles and borers from ruining your harvest. Just remember to lift the row cover in the early morning so those precious pollinators can have their way with your flowers – you can re-cover the plants mid-day before the heat arrives.
Out in the orchard, it’s time to look at all those tree branches with baby apples, pears, plums, and cherry clusters on them, and decide to thin the fruit to six inches apart or so – I know it’s hard to pick off the little darlings you have waited for since January, but you will have better, sweeter, larger fruit as a result.
GARDEN CALENDAR:
On the 8th of June, those healthy herbaceous plant husbanders, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will present a class on their favorite regional fruit trees: learn how to select, care for, and maximize production in your own personal orchard. Class costs $5, and runs from 1 – 2:30 P.M., at the Extension Office located at 227 South Garden Avenue, Newport. You can register for the class by calling the office at 509-447-2401.
On the 13th of June, our local garden club will start the 2023 garden touring season with a visit to an excellent local garden: new and old planting techniques, alternative seed starting methods, companion planting hints, and much more to be learned. We will promptly leave Camden Grange and Community Center (located at 7 Camden Road, Elk, WA) at 7 P.M., so please appropriately dress for a variety of weather conditions, LOL. Oh, and mosquitos.
You can obtain additional information on what is happening with our club by checking out our blog: www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or by looking at our Facebook page: “Elk-Camden Garden Keepers”.
That’s it for this month – don’t let those knee high weeds trip you, and pull you down – they’re hungry!
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