Elk Pioneer Days garden club booth

For those of you who did not attend the last two meetings or haven't yet read my column in the Elk Sentinel, the Elk/Camden Garden Keepers will (after a loooong hiatus) have a booth at the Elk Pioneer Days celebration to be held Saturday, June 16.  

We are in need of club members to spend an hour or two at the booth talking gardening, answering gardening questions, and telling people about this great, local gardening club you belong to.  

We are also looking for donations of plants, especially of the flowering variety (but will accept other types as well), to sell at the booth as a club fundraiser (remember those great speakers ($25 honorarium) and free club T-shirts for members?).  

Since we will have a meeting (tour actually) the Tuesday before Elk Days (that would be June 12) we would be happy to accept volunteer time signups and plants that evening.  If your plants aren't ready then bring them on down on Saturday morning and we'll set them out with what we already have received.  If you can't make the tour you can respond to this email to let us know you would be willing to share your love of gardening for a couple of hours at the booth.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the tour. Details will be sent closer to the date. 

Jim (and Pat)

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Hot, summer days already – we recorded 88 degrees Fahrenheit here at Rancho McGinty in late May, and the temperatures have not moderated much at all – a little rain would be nice.

Out in the garden, the corn stalks are about 2 feet high, and dark, dark green: I’m trying the Juneau, Alaska’s Extension Service’s method of growing sweet corn under challenging (short season) conditions. So I really loaded up the soil with over-wintered chicken manure, laid down drip irrigation, covered the whole mess with black polyfilm, and planted five week-old home-grown corn plugs (a 68-day variety from Gurney’s called “Quickie”) through the film. In about two weeks, I’ll add some fresh horse poo tea to the plants through a drip irrigation “fertigator” (a liquid fertilizer applicator that adds the filtered good stuff through the weep hose), and wait impatiently for fresh corn-on-the-cob.

Our garlic stalks are about 3 feet high, and starting to twist, so garlic seed pods, called “scapes,” are due any time – I like to clip the scapes off, so all the plant’s energy will develop bigger, better garlic bulbs – the scapes are excellent as pesto makings, or batter dipped and deep fried, or cut into salads.

Out in the garden, now is the time to plant seeds or transplant all those warm weather crops:  corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and squash (why?!), and pumpkins. Soon you will be thinning your rows of veggies, and those thinnings can be replanted, or used as tasty temptations for your livestock – be sure to water the plants left in the ground, as they will be feeling traumatized.

You will want to watch those rows of potato plants for exposed tubers – you can mound up dirt or heavy mulch (barnyard litter, leaves, etc.) around the plants to keep the sun from greening those precious potato skins.

If you have not already stopped cutting those delicious asparagus spears, now is the time to leave the plants alone until next spring – leave the remaining stalks to grow tall and produce fern-like leaves – it would be good to add some rotted manure or some compost around the asparagus crowns.  

Out in the orchard, now is the time to monitor those clusters of baby fruit, as we don’t want too many apple or pears banging into each other in the wind – you can thin the marble-sized fruit to about 6 inches apart. Bruised fruit equals rotted fruit.

Now is also a good time to prune out all those water sprouts from the centers of the trees – those shiny-barked new suckers will do nothing important for the your tree, and will only pull energy away from the process of growing food for you!

Speaking of food FROM you, remember to drain all the containers of standing water to discourage those pesky mosquitos – this is a good summer for the blood suckers, so let’s all fight back!

GARDENING CALENDAR

Last month, our local garden club was treated to guest speaker Chris Stevens, the garden coordinator from the North County Food Pantry.  Chris’ discussion of what is going on in their garden was so fun and informative that many club members asked if we can go back this spring to see the many changes and improvements.  So we are: on June 12, at 7 p.m., we will depart Camden Grange for a short drive to the Food Pantry (40015 N. Collins Road, Elk) for a tour of their updated drip irrigation system, new compost facility, changes in what goes where and when, and much more. Be sure to take pictures and/or notes of the many good ideas and methods employed by the Food Pantry garden crew – they grow a LOT of high quality food, using reduced water and electricity – and our garden budget can stand a little reduction. 

You can always find out what’s going on with our garden club by accessing (that sounds so official!) our club’s blog site right here.

On June 16, our garden club will have a booth in Elk Park during our community’s annual Elk Pioneer Days celebration, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. At our booth, you and the general public may purchase high-quality plants at more-than-fair prices, ask gardening questions, and closely interrogate club member volunteers on the REAL origins of our 20-year-old club. Our booth will be right alongside the booth sponsored by our sister club, the Backyard Beekeeper’s Association, which will offer cool information on the subject of bees, plant pollination, and unconfirmed theories on what is happening to our buzzing benevolent buddies.

That’s it for this month – time to pull weeds out of the ground (and feed them to the goats and sheep!), smother weeds with deep mulch, and then mutter anti-weed imprecations – the curses won’t help, but I’ll feel better, and that’s what it’s all about!

Post-meeting notes for May 2018

Thirty of us gathered at Camden Grange on the 8th of May for our monthly meeting, and spring class.  Our dynamic (!) speaker, Chris Stevens, the garden director at our local North County Food Pantry, provided us with an entertaining and informative class on how to operate a medium-sized garden on a budget. We all learned something from Chris: the benefits of drip irrigation, seed and variety selection, raised bed construction, and much more.  

Quite a few members button-holed me after the meeting with "suggestions" on the noise level during Chris' class: most of the noise and distractions were reportedly from youth members, and so we have some alternatives to children running from room to room, slamming doors, etc: use the larger grange hall for the children with older siblings as monitors/baby sitters, or limit the meetings to members older than 12 years of age, or ask parents and grandparents to exercise better control of their wards. Please think about this situation, and if you have a suggestion of your own, please e-mail me (j.p.mcgintyelk2@gmail.com) or call me at 509-292-0326.

After the meeting cleanup, we retrieved someone's door prize bag: Pat and I have it here, and will be glad to re-home it, if the owner will identify the contents and pick up said bag here at Rancho McGinty.

In June, we will be touring a local garden, and by then the mosquitos will be very hungry! Please plan accordingly - maybe we will send a sacrificial club member with exposed skin into the garden early, as a "trap crop" for the little blood suckers?

If you plan to help at the club's information booth in Elk Park, during Elk Pioneer Days (16 June 2018), please call me so I can add your name to the roster, and/or if you will have plant starts to donate to the booth, as a club fund raiser, also please let me know what you plan to donate (summer/fall veggies, herbs, flowers including house plants, etc.).

Jim

More information re: May garden club meeting

A couple of updates concerning tomorrow's (May 8) meeting of the Elk Camden Garden Keepers. 

1.  Our ever efficient and productive gardener, Barbara Midtbo, will be bringing the following to the meeting -

        Tomatoes - $3 each or 2 for $5 

         Very Hot  Peppers - $2 each

         Yellow Tomatillos - $2 each (need a minimum of three for planting) 

The proceeds will benefit ECGK so bring your wallet (preferably with money in it).

2. A reminder that it was approved by the membership to have a booth at Elk Pioneer Days this year.  We will need plants (preferably flowers and herbs because it will be mid-June) and volunteers to do a two hour shift answering questions and visiting with our neighbors on Saturday, June 16 in Elk Park.  It will be the first time in a number of years the Garden club has had a presence at Elk Days and it is a perfect time to support our community while verbally sharing about our favorite subject. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow evening at 7 p.m.

Jim

Garden club meeting warning notice!

We will assemble at Camden Grange at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the 8th of May, for our monthly meeting. 

This month we welcome Chris Stevens, who is the garden coordinator for the North County Food Pantry, here in Elk. Our club toured their large garden last summer, and Chris and his helpers were a lot of fun, and full of information on growing food in our challenging region of the world. Due to the large number of our questions Chris was unable to answer at the time, he will be talking about aspects of food gardening (both home-size and larger!):  planning the garden, plant and seed selection, picking seed suppliers, raised bed construction, drip irrigation systems, soil nutrition and mulching, weeds and pests, and how to schedule the harvest. Whew!

We will also have a short business meeting, a show of hands for our Elk Days booth volunteers and plant suppliers, and our usual rumors and counter-rumors. If you have something for the "I don't have a place for this garden tool, catalog, or packet of seeds at my house" table, feel free to bring those items along.  Members are also asked to bring along their favorite snack items, gardening-related questions, and quiet babies, children, and spouses. Our club will provide hot beverages, and an opportunity to learn some new gardening techniques and tips.
Don't forget the Garden Expo at Spokane Community College this coming Saturday, May 12 – a great opportunity to purchase nearly all your gardening needs and wants!

Jim

Attention, fans of free flowers!

Frequent garden club blog reader Nancy Dimick has an offer you may not want to refuse: free, and numerous daylilies, ready for you to dig and take home. Nancy said she has "hundreds of the things," and just wants them to go home to a special kind of garden - yours!  

Please call Nancy at 509-292-8771 to make an appointment, and  for directions to her Fertile Valley home. Shovels, garden forks, gloves, large plastic bags, and a determined recycler or two are needed.

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit, with blue skies, and fleecy white clouds – what better time to plant our favorite tomatoes and peppers out in the open garden – but wait!  

Those garden centers are salivating at the thought of you putting your expensive starts outside, and then WHAM!, we have a frost overnight, and you rush right down to those same plant people and buy some more!  Sort of a “lather, rinse, repeat” cycle until mid-June or so – or, OR, you could just wait a little longer (I do know that our local gardeners are not the most patient of people), and save money, time, and frustration (and a few tears – sob). 

The gardening old-timers in our area always told me to wait until the snow has melted off the north face of Mount Spokane before planting sensitive plants outdoors – the problem being that if we wait too long, the tomatoes, peppers, and most anything with a long growing season will not mature before our first killer frost. Thus, our gardening quandary:  plant early, and hope for no late frosts, or plant late, and hope for no early frosts.  

Here at Rancho McGinty, we hedge our garden bets by planting a few “volunteers” (read “sacrifices”) early, and then plant additional waves of plants that will either replace those first brave (but dead) starts, or that will supplement the harvest if no frosts occur.  And yes, we do occasionally have a mid-summer frost – we keep “frost blankets” or floating row cover (brand names of “Ree-May” or “Agribond”) ready to toss over precious plants when colder temperatures threaten.

Now is a great time to amend your garden soil with a final addition of compost, leaves, or aged manure – I like to rototill this layer and then prepare the seed bed, as it is seeding time for some of the cool weather crops:  peas, beets, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, radishes, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips, etc.  

In the strawberry beds, now is a terrific time to pull off any mulch or covering, but remember to wait until blossoms appear before applying a thin sprinkling of fertilizer or manure – we want tasty strawberries, not lush leaf growth.

Speaking of berries, now is the time to plant or transplant new blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc. – remember to allow LOTS of growing space around the plants – as an example, we like to space to space the raspberry rows about 8 feet apart, thus leaving a “scratch-free zone” of about 2 feet for plant maintenance and berry harvest. Speaking of scratching, now is the time to prune out all of last year’s fruit-bearing canes – you can cut out all of the brown canes, leaving six or so of the green or purple canes per foot of row, that will produce berries this year.

This is also a great time to plant fruit trees, and perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb, and horseradish – in fact, this is a great time to be outside in the garden, breathing the clean, fresh spring air, and feeling the sun’s heat, and, well, just being alive – and knowing that you can safely store the snow shovels.

GARDENING CALENDAR

On the 8^th of May, our local gardening club will meet in Camden Grange at 7 p.m., for our last indoor spring meeting, as we will start touring neighborhood gardens in June. This month we will have another guest speaker and topic (additional details will be available here) as well as our usual “please take this home with you” table, lots of snacks and drinks, rumors and counter-rumors, and a lot of fun.

On the 12^th of May, plan to attend the Garden Expo, held at Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The annual event is free, as is parking, and is THE place to purchase plants, garden equipment and supplies, and seek professional gardening advice from folks who actually know what they are talking about.  With hundreds of vendors, and delicious food opportunities, the event is an all-day affair, with classes and demonstrations, guest speakers, and you are likely to bump into a gardening someone you know! Even if you are “just looking”, be sure to bring a conveyance (wagon, cart, pack mule) as you will likely find something perfect for your garden.

That’s it for this month – plenty to do, and dry, warm weather in which to do it.  See you in the garden.