Weeding Between the Lines

By Jim McGinty

Spring sprang a full month ahead of whatever passes for weather “normal” these days. Many local gardeners, including some longtime gardeners who should know better, are asking, “Is it time to start seed yet?” and “Can we plant early this year?” For the second year in a row (66 percent ?), we have 50-plus degree Fahrenheit temperatures in February – at least here in Northeast Washington.

The answers are “yes” and “yes”, but (you had to guess there would be a “but” in there, somewhere, right?), you want to start your seeds (onions, parsley, tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli should be started now; peppers and more tomatoes by mid-March) in “waves,” that is to say, start seeds of the same type and quantity a couple of weeks apart. If you are able to safely plant that first wave of victims/volunteers, and grow them to harvest, more power to you, but (there is that “but” again), if we have a week of killing frosts that wipes out the poor seedlings, well, you have a back up wave or two waiting in the wings, so to speak. If all (!) the waves safely produce food for your family, you’ll have the best-tasting veggies on the planet to eat, preserve (through canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc.), trade or give to your neighbors, or maybe you’ll want to donate them to our local, deserving food bank (North County Food Pantry, 509-292-2530). As to the mythical “last frost date”, beyond which all plantings WILL be safe from those savage icy blasts, no one knows, and as a prudent gardener, you will have all those waves of leafy, green helpers ready to throw themselves outside into your garden. Humble, yet thorough, that’s us! 

Speaking of prudent gardening, now is a great time to prune all of your fruit trees and bushes: cut out those dead, diseased, or damaged limbs, and all of those cursed water sprouts, and all of last year’s fruit-bearing raspberry canes (the brown, scruffy canes, not the green, shiny ones that will bear all those mouth-watering berries this summer). If you have access to woodstove ashes, now is the time to sprinkle those ashes around your fruit trees and bushes – don’t get carried away, but the included potash increases fruit sweetness. If you are growing currents and/or gooseberries, you can safely lop or saw off all those three year-old (or older) trunks, as they will produce no fruit. 

Have you bought your seeds for this year – or better, have you traded seeds with your gardening neighbor or fellow garden club member yet? Once again, those mail-order seed catalogs, with hundreds of pages of beautifully posed and photographed veggies and fruit, have notices showing ‘’out of stock” or “crop failure – no seeds for 2016.” Don’t wait too long, or there will be nothing left but seed packets for ornamental or poisonous squash (is there another kind?!). Finally, now is the perfect time to evaluate your inventory of expensive garden tools: check for broken tines, cracked or splintered handles, dull or rusty edges, and missing tools (I usually “discover” some trowels and pruners with the rototiller every spring – I call the events “serendipitous,” while my gardening partner, Pat, calls them “evidence”).

GARDENING CALENDAR

On March 1, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners will offer a class on growing and pruning fruit trees: tree specialist and friend John Stuart and I will show how to care for your expensive backyard orchard.  Class runs from 6-8 p.m. at the Camas Center (located at 1981 Leclerc Rd., Cusick), and you can call the WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension office at 509-447-2401 for more details, cost, and registration.

On March 2, I’ll be teaching another much-requested class, this one on crosscut saws. We’ll discuss vintage two-man and one-man saw history, as well as purchasing, renovating, and sharpening. Class will run from 6-8 p.m. at the Newport College Center (1302 W. 5^th Ave., Newport) – you can call the center at 509-447-3835 for more details, cost, and to register for the class.

On March 8, at the Camas Center, Stan Urmann (“Mr. Blueberry”) will teach a class on his favorite subject, growing and eating blueberries – if you want to successfully raise blueberry plants in your garden, Stan’s your source for simple and reliable information. Class runs from 6-8 p.m., and all the Camas information is the same as the earlier calendar entry.

Also on March 8, our local garden club meets for the first time this year, from 7-9 p.m., in Camden Grange. We’ll have a short “welcome back” organizational meeting, and then we’ll launch right off for the 2016 gardening season with a class on homemade seed tape, a seed-and-plant swap fest, our member-provided tasty snacks, and we’ll start and/or update rumors about you – be sure to be there! If you have an abundance of duplicate or unwanted garden seed and garden equipment catalogs, please bring them along – we would rather recycle/pass them along, than burden the landfills.

On March 9, I’ll offer a class on seed starting, at the Newport College Center, from 6-8 p.m. We’ll talk about and demonstrate the how, when, and why of home garden seed starting – it’s time to start seeds now, and you can call the Center at 509-447-3835 for class details and to register.

On March 16, I’ll bring a willing tree volunteer to a fruit tree pruning class at the Newport College Center. From 6-8 p.m., we’ll discuss the hows of artful pruning, and then we’ll get into the gritty, clippy details, one branch at a time.  Once again, you can call the center at 509-447-3835 for more information, and to register for the class.

On March 23, I’ll teach “sharp” individuals the skills of fruit tree grafting, in the Newport College Center, from 6-8 p.m.: students will want to bring their favorite SHARP pocket knife, and a cutting surface (a plastic kitchen cutting mat is excellent). Class details and registration are available from the center by calling 509-447-3835.

On March 29, John Stuart and I are back at the Camas Center to demonstrate the art of fruit tree grafting – this is a hands-on class from 6-8 p.m., so motivated students will want to bring their own wicked-sharp pocket knives and cutting boards (kitchen cutting mat, 12-inch square of plywood, etc.).  Once again, you can call the Pend Oreille County Extension office for more details.

Good grief – the gardening season is just beginning, and I’m already pooped – good thing we started early, huh?!

EXPO yes or no? Vote now!

Several club members have asked me if we are going to have a booth at the Garden Expo 2016, as we did this year. Pat and I are not able to organize or lead the charge for the Expo 2016, so would one of you (or a combination of you) club members like to take the helm for next year? Pat and I kept pretty good notes on the 2015 experience, and we can provide the 2016 chairperson(s) with accurate advice.

Let me know by Saturday, Nov. 7, please, as we must send a booth-space deposit to hold our 2015 location (which was awesome!).
Jim

_________________________
I vote yes! because we seemed to do quite well. If we decide to do it, I'll commit to providing at least 50 plants (Russian tomatoes and others) and helping with any signage. But I'm no good with the public or with money, and probably can't do set up or take down. What do you all say?
Su
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Set up and take down team helpers here. I will commit to 50 plants (not tomato).
Diane

Harvest Dinner closes the 2015 gardening year

Our last meeting for 2015 was on Oct. 13, with 14 or 15 club members present for our annual Harvest Dinner. 

The harvest diners

We assembled at Camden Grange, and promptly discovered we had the makings for an awesome, gourmet meal!  Most of us filled our plates twice, and some of us (not me of course!) found room for a "small" bit of dessert, as well. The gathering of local gardeners was great, as we discussed what worked in our gardens this year, and, as important, what did not: early spring 2016 garden club classes include hands-on demonstrations of homemade seed tape, fruit tree grafting, and expandable tomato cage construction (club member Steve Byars is our Cage King).

Be sure to watch for the March 2016 edition of the "Elk Sentinel" newspaper for details on our first meeting of the year, and as always, enjoy your quiet, reflective season – remember to lift that heavy snow shovel with your knees, not your back!

jim

Final meeting and harvest dinner!

Our final club meeting for 2015 will be on Tuesday, 13 October – this will be our annual harvest dinner, at Camden Grange at 7 p.m.

We will dine on delicious, local food, as well as chat and gripe and discuss the 2015 gardening season in detail – what worked and what did not.

Our club will be providing the protein (meat) part of the meal, so please write back to me (or call me at 292-0326) to confirm you will be present at the dinner.

I plan to purchase/find some kind of appropriate meat-like substance (ham, chicken, fairly recent road kill) on Monday, and a head count will help. Otherwise, I will bring enough venison for me, only.

Please plan to bring a side dish/casserole/salad/dessert/bread-thing for the meal (enough for four hungry gardeners), and it would be awesome (!) if the side dish ingredients include some of the produce from your garden or orchard.

LONG-time club member Barbara will be providing us with our table cloths, plates, settings, and decorations. For those of you who don't know, she takes all that stuff home after the dinner, to launder and clean. Thank you, Barbara! 

Call me, please.

jim

Weeding Between the Lines

By Jim McGinty

As singer/comedian/entertainer Jimmy Durante would have said, “I’m mortified!” – a few measly 25-degree-Fahrenheit nights, and the tomato, pepper, bean, and basil plants in the open garden changed from green to black in color, and just turned up their toes! The same plants growing in the Earth Boxes on the deck are draped with Ree-May® frost blanket, and are still producing food, so though we cannot control the weather (and our growing conditions), we can at least moderate some of those weather effects.

This has been another amazing weather year, with new records set for high and low temperatures, number of days without moisture, pollen and particulate counts, and more.  Moderating and adapting to our local weather conditions may well prove to be very important in the gardening future – learn to be flexible, if you enjoy eating.

Here at Rancho McGinty, we learned a number of new gardening techniques this year, and we also trialed a number of new (to us) food items:  seed tape (individual seeds “glued” to long strips of biodegradable paper) was a hit, especially as my gardening partner Pat and I were pressed for time in the early part of the planting year.  The seed tapes for carrots and beets were excellent, producing beautiful, large produce, and were a snap to lay in the raised bed soil, cover lightly with more soil, and water as necessary. One can easily make one’s own tape (some see us at our local garden club meeting next spring for a show-and-do class), or one can buy tapes from Gurney’s, Burpee, and other seed merchants.

The successful, new food items include Golden Cross cabbage (smaller, softball-sized heads perfect for two hungry folks), Doyle thornless, trailing blackberries (three plants produced literally buckets of delicious berries), Sweet Pickle peppers (our pepper bushes are still covered with dozens of small, perfect-for-pickling, colorful peppers), Melenzana eggplant was a hit with our chickens, and even for the taste-bud-confused human diners, and in the tomato category, Chadwick cherry tomatoes were the first to ripen (and tasted, therefore, all the more delicious!), and the Megabite, Silvery Fir Tree and Scotia tomatoes were BIG producers. The Scotia tomato plants (a true cool-weather variety) loafed through our hottest months, but produced a bumper crop of fruit when all of the other summer tomato plants were shivering and complaining.

For the balance of this year’s gardening season, you still have time (for the next three weeks or so) to plant garlic, and any of those remaining potted fruit trees and bushes – just remember to provide each tree or bush with an identification label so you will know, next year, what you planted this year.

This also the time to divide that humongous rhubarb plant down into manageable size: just chop out a quarter of the root with a sharp spade, fill in the “wound” with compost or garden soil, and replant the liberated root into it’s own place – or maybe donate it to a neighbor.

If you have not already pruned the spent raspberry canes (the canes that produced berries this year), this is a good time to cut out all those brown and black canes, leaving the greenish/yellow fruiting canes for next spring.

Final chores in the garden include pulling up and composting those blackened or spent plants (no bug infestations or plant diseases in the compost bin, please), adding manure to ferment in the roto-tilled soil over the winter, mulching any over-Wintering plants, such as the afore-mentioned garlic, strawberries, assorted herbs, and other such (we use seed-free straw, pine needles, and maple and/or ash tree leaves for mulch). If you use drip irrigation (polypipe or T-tape), this is a good time to pull up the drip systems, drain them (so they don’t freeze and crack over the winter), and safely store them – this task is true for garden hoses, nozzles, and fittings (splitters, manifolds, etc.) as well.

One more chore is to gather all those scattered garden tools and check them over for damage or wear: cracked or splintered shovel handles, dull pruning shears, bent fork tines, etc. One would be advised to clean and oil the metal parts of one’s garden tools, and be sure to make a note (not a “mental” note, as one will forget during the required Winter nap) to repair, sharpen, or replace one’s expensive tools before spring.

With all of the autumn leaves and pine needles falling all around us, I trust you are bagging and saving these garden treasures for next year’s endeavors? Your ill-informed neighbors would LOVE to donate their forest and orchard “litter” to you – just ask.

Whew!  That’s a lot of chores and work – good thing those precious tomatoes taste so much better than the store-bought, red, cardboard-tasting produce we will avoid until next July.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On Oct. 7, I will be teaching a Garlic 101 class at the Newport College Center from 6-8 p.m.  Just in time for autumn seeding, we will talk about garlic selection, planting, encouragement, and harvesting. You can call the Newport center (located at 1204 West Fifth Street, Newport) at 509-447-3835 for more information or to register for the class.

On the 13th of October, our local garden club will hold its last meeting for this year, and feature our annual Harvest Dinner, at Camden Grange at 7 p.m. We encourage all our local gardeners (members of our club and members of the general public) to cook up something grown in your garden (enough for four hungry gardeners), and bring it to the meeting for an evening of excellent food, entertaining company, and stories of the woes and joys of growing food in our challenging location.

On the 14th of October, I will be teaching a Backyard Chickens class at the afore-mentioned Newport College Center from 6-8 p.m. We will talk about the best methods of raising your own chickens for eggs, meat, and entertainment. Once again, you can call the center at 509-447-3835 for more information or to register for the class.

Finally, I will be teaching additional gardening classes for the Community Colleges of Spokane (in the Newport Center), starting in way, way-off January 2016:  we’ll have educational fun with subjects including old school (19th century) gardening, crosscut saws, fruit tree grafting, fruit tree pruning, seed starting and drip irrigation. You can call the College at 509-279-6025 for a printed catalog illuminating classes that are scheduled into March 2016. You need a good excuse to get out of the cabin confines anyway, so I hope to see you in class!

That’s it for this month AND year – enjoy your autumn and winter, and don’t overdo the snow shoveling – remember what I said earlier about staying flexible.

The Joys of Beekeeping

By Pat McGinty 

Spring has sprung and summer’s gone; fall is here and we’re almost done.  Beekeeping season is winding down; not because it’s fall but because as the weather gets cooler the bees know there won’t be any food and, most likely, lots of rain, snow, and cold so they go into a kind of hibernation. At this point they are best left alone with only the occasional check when the temperatures are above 40 degrees and the weather dry. I know this is hard to believe but this is the worst time of year for beekeeping. Why, you ask? Because there are so many unknowns. 

Sadly, one thing I do know is that I will be taking only one of my colonies into winter.  Somewhere in the past month I lost a queen and there is absolutely no brood anywhere in the hive. The bottom brood box is completely empty except for a frame of honey and the top brood box has a mix of empty frames and honey/pollen frames. When I put the organic miticide treatment in the boxes a week ago (more about this shortly), the remaining bees in the north hive were still busily preparing their food frames but they know it is too late to try to raise a new queen (I am finding dead drones that have been ousted from the hives because they don’t do any work so there are no drones to fertilize a new queen if there was one.) So they are basically trying to live the best they can until their lifespans are up. As sad as it sounds it is the way of nature, all nature including human nature. All of God’s creatures instinctively know what is coming and do what is necessary despite the outcome. Only human nature has lost (or ignores) that instinct. So what am I going to do with my “north hive?  Let’s talk about the mite treatment first.

It is the belief, especially of commercial beekeepers, that all bee colonies get mites and these mites weaken and eventually kill the hive. You have probably read about it if you have seen any of the articles on Colony Collapse Disorder.)  I have done some pretty extensive reading on the subject and my jury is still out on the truth of that belief because many of the sources I have read say the mites are part of the symbiotic relationship in the natural bee world. However, as long as I don’t have to dope up my bees with laboratory produced miticides I want to give them every chance I can (which is probably a mistake since they got along without human intervention for centuries. But then we all know that “humans know best” what every other species [and often other humans] need to be happy, happy, happy.) So I did my beekeeping duty and put the miticide pads in place on Monday, Sept. 21, wearing rubber gloves and trying not to breathe in the very smelly fumes. I know what you are thinking; if it is organic it shouldn’t be harmful to anything but the mites.  I agree but I also read the instructions first (something I don’t always do. Yep, I am human and dang proud of it.) Will it really help; I don’t know but at least if some other beekeeper asks I can say I did it even though I never found any mites in either hive in the first place.  So now on to what I am going to do about the north hive.

Saving a colony without a queen is not possible. By now she would have been laying brood that was specific to surviving the winter (these are known as “fat bees” and, no, that is not a reason to claim that extra weight you are carrying around has the same purpose.)  Since there is no queen there are no fat bees so the hive will die out. However, with a little intervention from the beekeeper, they can at least have useful lives helping out the remaining hive. On Monday, Sept. 28, (which hasn’t happened for me yet but will have happened by the time you are reading about it) I will be doing my hive check and remove the miticide pads. At that time I will move the remaining bees from the north hive to the south hive. The process is fairly easy and will, hopefully, improve the survivability of the south colony.  

After checking the health and well-being of the south hive I will place a “queen excluder” (a small flat piece of plastic or metal with openings large enough for worker bees to get through but not a queen just in case she is alive [very unlikely]) on top of the second brood box on the south hive. I will set the honey-filled brood box from the north hive on top of the queen excluder and brush any bees from the bottom brood box of the north hive on to the top of the frames of the honey-filled brood box (the empty brood box will be put away for next year.) If all goes well, over the next week the north-hive bees will be accepted by the south-hive bees. Once that happens I can take the remaining north hive brood box, remove any honey/pollen frames and store them in the freezer in case of need before the next food gathering in the spring of 2016 (did I mention that the south hive has two frames of honey in the bottom brood box and eight frames of honey in the top brood box.) I will also feed some extra pollen to the hive so they don’t deplete their food supply too early and starve to death.  Then, God willing, I will have at least one strong hive from which I can build one or more hives using NUC (pronounced “nuke” short for nucleus) boxes next year and continue keeping bees. If not, then I will be buying packages again if I want to keep my hives going.
  

In addition to combining the two hives I will need to keep the remaining hive warm and dry. In the past I have successfully used inch-and-a-half closed-cell Styrofoam wrapped around the hive with openings at the top and bottom for air flow. I also place one on the top cover to keep it from getting cold and sweating as it interacts with the heat the colony produces (remember that bees keep their hive at 95 degrees year around without help from the sun.) I also plan to slightly reposition the hive to face more easterly and toward the trees which should keep down excessive wind thus keeping rain and snow out of the hive.  As I said at the beginning there are way too many unknowns. We shall just have to wait and see.

This may or may not be the last column until January. The weather will dictate how much time I can spend with the bees and therefore how much I can share with you concerning their condition and my experiences. If I don’t get another one out please have a blessed holiday season and remember that Jesus is the reason. 

The Backyard Beekeepers Association will have their last meeting of 2015 on Thursday, Oct. 15, at the Deer Park Library (208 S. Forest Ave.). The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. and we will have a honey tasting with honey supplied by some of our members as well as “Winter Preparation Peggy’s Way” as our educational segment. We will also recognize those that completed the Beginning Beekeeper training.  

Speaking of which the training is taking place on Saturdays, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., also at the Deer Park Library. The cost is $30 and you can still register by bringing your registration fee, a notebook and pencil to the class on Saturday, October 3.  

I hope I see you at one or both.  

Tomatoes or raspberries, anyone?

Here's a Diane Lukas Recommended Grower of tomatoes: Utecht Produce has u-pick $.40 lb. or they pick for $.50 lb. Call Cammie at 999-5937.

And Diane's dad has raspberry starts. U dig (in the Newport area), but hurry as he'll be tilling them under soon. Shoot her an email at dianelukas@rocketmail.com.