WEEDING BETWEEN THE LINES

By Jim McGinty

Lots to do in the garden – water everything, harvest, add compost or fertilizer, weed, replant or reseed the Autumn garden, plan for the 2020 garden – so much to do, and all with the thought In mind, that some time soon-ish, we will experience our first frost.  Ugh.

Daytime temperatures are still in the eighties Fahrenheit, so be sure to monitor the soil moisture levels in the garden, especially in your raised beds, as they dry out much faster than the soil in the open garden.  

If you are going to try an Autumn garden (to be harvested before the first killing frost – it says here in fine print), now is a good time to add compost or fertilizer to those beds or areas.  Even with an imposing deadline (and I do mean “dead” line) of first frost, there is time to plant or seed short season (forty-five day or less) somethings that will be edible:  baby carrots, cauliflower, kale, lettuce, bok choi, bunching onions, radishes, golden zucchini, turnips, bush beans, beets, and many more.  With a little effort on your part, and a long, warm lead-in to cold temperatures, you can potentially harvest a second crop of low-cost, high-quality food from your garden.

Above all else, now is a great time to closely look at your garden, with the intention of improving next year’s garden:  where will you rotate your 2020 crops, especially those susceptible to evil blight problems (potatoes, tomatoes, egg plants), or soil borne problems (garlic).  Which areas will need some fertilizer, and which areas will need a lot of fertilizer – we use an every other year light application of composted fertilizer approach here on Rancho McGinty.  Some gardeners use the four-year fertilizer approach:  heavily fertilize in year one (plant hungry crops like corn), no fertilizer for year two (plant squash and pumpkins), no fertilizer in year three (plant beans), and in year four, use the mostly-depleted soil for potatoes (helps reduce potatoe scab).  Then start over with a heavy application of poo.  

Right now is the time to trim back all those plant flowers.  Example:  we don’t have time for squash (actually there is NO time for squash – yuk) flowers to grow into mature fruit – you will have to decide if you want to remove all those precious flowers, and force the plants to focus on food production for you, or do you want to harvest a lot of immature, inedible (but I already used the word “yuk”) squash pods.Towards the end of September or in early October, it will be time to plant garlic:  I like to plant the individual cloves (pointy end up) in four inch deep trenches, six inches apart, with rows sixteen inches between (so I can carefully walk down the rows when weeding next Summer).  I rake the hilled dirt back onto the cloves, water heavily to settle the cloves, cover the area with six inches of mulch (to reduce weed competition and minimize over-Winter frost heaves), then walk away until next March.

If you have been wisely waiting until cooler weather, to plant new trees or bushes, the end of September is a good time for this chore – rainfall depending, you will want to provide lots of water to your new food factories.  With the recent underground rodent (gophers, moles, voles) invasion, I have started planting my precious heritage fruit trees in home made wire baskets:  I buy a three foot wide by ten foot long piece of galvanized half inch opening hardware cloth, and cut it into three equal-armed crosses (ala a Templar knight cross - a one foot square bottom, with four one foot square arms), bend the arms up at ninety degrees, and attach the arms together using wire, or zip ties.  I dig an appropriate hole in the orchard, drop the basket cube into the hole, add tree and dirt, and voila!  So far, three years into this concept, none of the new trees have been nibbled to death.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On September 10^th, our local garden club will offer an indoor class on making concrete leaf castings – you have probably seen these giant (twenty-four inches wide, or more!) leaf-shaped casts, complete with leaf ribs and veins, used as planters, bowls, or bird baths.  We meet in Camden Grange at 7 P.M., and as always, the public is invited to attend.

For more details on the class, and for additional gardening information, you can check out our Facebook group page, or look at our club’s blogsite:  www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com.

On the 12^th of September, those big-hearted boosters of bushy bounty, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on backyard composting for the home gardener, taught by none other than my own self. The class will offer instructions, advice, and tips on creating your own “brown gold” from inexpensive or free ingredients, from 6:30 – 8:30 P.M., in the W.S.U./Pend Oreille County Extension office (227 South Garden Avenue, Newport).  Cost for the class is $5, and you can register for the class, or maybe ask additional questions, by calling the office at 509-447-2401.

That’s it for now – time to harvest the bush beans again, the sugar peas for the last time, and the fava beans for the first time – it’s great to be a gardener!

August tour warning

We will be assembling at Camden grange this coming Tuesday evening (13 August) for a tour of Vista Haven Farm.  We will depart Camden grange at 7 p.m. for the short drive to Kim McCay's farm, which features:  11 acres of hay fields, 1 1/2 acres of organic garden including a fruit orchard, asparagus beds, berry patch (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries), and cut flower raised beds.  Future farm improvements include 1/2 acre of baby vegetables and salad mixes, caterpillar tunnels, a large greenhouse, and high tunnels.

This will be our last tour of the summer, and you will want to bring along your cellphone (camera) and notebook/pencil, as Kim has a lot going on, and you will have a LOT of questions for her - she is very knowledgeable on the subject of small farms, u-pick operations, and gardening in general.

Next month, club member Marlene Routt has offered to show us how to make those amazing concrete rhubarb leaf garden decorations/planters.  Might be an outdoor class, might be indoors, depending on the weather.

See you Tuesday evening, 

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Talk about your weather swings!  Here in beautiful Elk, Washington, we went from 70 degree Fahrenheit days to 94 degree days in a week.  The tomatoes, peppers, Fava beans, bush beans, and late-planted sugar peas are loving the heat, as long as they have sufficient water.  Some plants, such tomatoes and squash, will produce flowers in this heat, but over 85 degrees or so, the pollen is infertile, and you just have ornamental flowers.  You could wait for the temperatures to moderate, or one could try covering the plants using shade cloth, or try installing water misting systems to reduce the temperature on the plants.  In any event, remember to water before the plants shows signs of heat stress (wilting plants, cupped/curled or yellowing leaves).  This is where you use your Mark I digital moisture meter to see if the plants need water:  push a finger into the soil to the first knuckle (your knuckle, not the plant’s knuckle!), and if the finger comes out wet or moist, you can move on to the next plant – if your digit is dry, you’ll want to add water.  If the digit comes up knawed-on or missing, you have a serious gopher problem.

In this kind of heat, drip irrigation shows its true value, by placing your expensive water right at the base of the plant where the water can do the most good, with minimum waste.

Speaking of applying water, remember to turn and water your compost piles/bins – compost will take forever to finish if the pile/bin dries out.

Here at Rancho McGinty, the 2019 garlic harvest is over, and the crop looks really good:  hardball-sized bulbs, minimal gopher damage, and lots of garlicky-goodness on the meal-time horizon.

In the garden, now is the time to plant your autumn crops, so as to maximize your harvest (your garden soil is too expensive in terms of sweat equity and inputs such as manure, fertilizer, etc., to just grow food for only the summer season).  Cool weather, short season crops such as lettuce, beets, carrots, spinach, kale, bush beans, and many more may still produce high-quality, low-cost food for you and your family – and the garden is already there, waiting for you!

If you are growing a mass of melons and/or squash, now is the time to start reducing the number of vines, flowers, and baby squash, in favor of bigger, more ripe, more numerous food items.  Pruning out some (10 percent or so) of the older, more ragged leaves on the plants will allow better air circulation (and fewer mold and wilt problems), and will improve sunshine access.  Don’t forget to raise your melons and/or squash off the ground in order to keep their little tushies clean of mud/mold/rot – a simple board, tile, or block will suffice.

Now is also the time to watch for those early season potato plants to tell you that “it’s time to harvest me!” Yellowing leaves, browning stems, tilting plants all mean that mashed potatoes, sliced and fried potatoes, French fries, and more spuddy-goodness await your probing  fingers.

GARDEN CALENDAR

August 4, our fearless flora fans the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer their 28^th annual Garden Tour, from 1-5 .pm. in the Newport area.  You can call the W.S.U. Extension Office at 509-447-2401 for more details.

On August 13, our local garden club will conduct the final garden tour of the 2019 season, with a visit to a large, commercial-garden-to-be, with asparagus beds (green, and purple asparagus!), raspberry patches, salad green gardens, drip irrigation, Back-to-Eden wood chip mulch, and much more – you don’t want to miss this tour.  We will depart promptly at 7 p.m. from Camden Grange for a short drive to the garden site, and remember to bring your cameras or cellphones, as there is a lot to see, and some cool things to learn.  More tour details will be available on our club’s blog, here, or you can check our Facebook group page.

Remember to drink lots of fluids during this warm summer, and seek shade when your body says “whoa!” – I don’t want to read about you on the obituary page.

July garden tour

After a dust-filled, bumpy detour around the under-construction Elk bridge, all 28 of us rambled through the gardens of Kathy and Ed Reedy on the delightful evening of 9 July.  We saw a very productive veggie garden, wonderfully-landscaped ponds and waterfalls, and well-kept lawns all around us.  Hosts Kathy and Ed received their highly coveted Garden Club traditional Garden Gnome with appropriate game faces ("what the heck is this??!!"), and turned us loose to browse, admire, and pummel them with questions.

One of the questions was "where did the veggie garden weed block fabric come from?".  Kathy said she bought the commercial grade fabric from Bark Boys in north Spokane (15402 North Highway 2, Mead - phone 509-465-1819), and so I inquired:  a 36" by 50' roll of black woven (green stripe) weed block costs $18, and both Pat and I agree that would be money well-spent.  Kathy said she just rolls up the fabric at the end of each garden season, and that the fabric lasts for at least 10 years of use - she did tell me to remember to place the fabric on the dirt, felt side down.

One last amazing garden club tour in August; in September, we'll have a hands-on, indoor (?) class on making those concrete, giant leaf-shaped garden decorations or cupped planters, courtesy of club member Marlene Routt.

See you in August!

Jim

Garden club July tour warning notice

We will gather at Camden Grange on the evening of 9 July 2019, and depart promptly at 7 p.m. for a tour of the gardens located behind the home of Kathy and Ed Reedy, owner/operators of Reedy's Custom Meats, near beautiful downtown Elk.  

Please do not arrive early for a personalized tour, and also please remember that the Elk bridge is still ungoing major construction.  Accordingly, our club convoy will make a number of detours from the grange to Reedy's home.  If you want to wait for the convoy, you could park near the Backwoods Store in Elk (on the east side of the bridge), and zoom in behind us.

See you at the grange, 

Jim

June tour: wobblers and human-powered cultivator

On the 11th of June, 34 club members descended on "Montague Heritage Farms" in Elk, for our June garden tour.  Ed and Lisa Montague and their family are in the process of changing their large family garden into a retirement income farm, complete with hoop houses, salad mix sales, heritage chickens (red eggs, green eggs, pink eggs), a huge walk-in cooler, and lots of green things growing in long rows.

Lisa (Ed was away at gainful employment during our noisy visit - smart man!) pointed out their use of "Wobblers" to water their long rows of healthy plants - Wobblers are sprayers on PVC pipe uprights, that make efficient use of limited water.  

Wobblers are available from Amazon.com (of course), Dripdepot.com, and from Farmtek.com.
Also of interest was the family's use of a human-powered rotary cultivator inside the raised beds, that caught the eye of more than one envious gardener:  the green and yellow (NOT a "John Deere" product!) cultivator is available from "Lehman's" and "Cottage Craft Works."

Please note that members must be present during meetings and tours in order to receive any goodies from drawings or give aways - your buddy may only take home his or her loot.

We'll be touring in both July and August, so stay tuned.

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Here in the garden at Rancho McGinty, the mantra of the day is “So far, so good,”meaning no bad news, and some good news.  Examples abound:  the garlic is almost waist high, and the scapes (the pig-tail curly things at the top of the garlic stalks are the plant’s seed pods) are ready to harvest, batter coat, and fry, or maybe we’ll chop them into the salad instead of using green onions.  We harvested, lightly steamed, and ate the first of the broccoli florets – covering the plants with floating row cover means that we have no aphids or other creepies hiding in the edibles, so that makes for an efficient dinner, as I don’t like to take a lot of time to closely examine my food for evidence of insect bodies and their daily wastes (ewww!).  The potato plants are looking really good, with dark green leaves, and beautiful flowers in blue, white, red, and yellow:  almost time to dig up some baby red spuds for a boil up with butter, salt and pepper, and maybe some chives.

The cabbage, both red and white varieties, are heading up, with big green leaves, and (due to a covering of the aforementioned floating row cover) no aphids or cabbage loopers in sight.  The corn (sigh) is only about 10 inches high, so despite the old adage of “knee high by the Fourth of July,” our corn crop is still iffy – we will shortly see.

Our kale plants (both red and curly types) are also ready to harvest, so we’ll be cooking up a batch with bacon, onions, and garlic.  Speaking of onions, the plants currently growing through the experimental black plastic polyfilm mulch are four times the size of the same onions growing alongside in the garden soil – may be the heat sink effect, or may be the lack of weed competition, but something is definitely efficient with the black mulch.

Out in the orchard, now is the time to continue the process of removing water sprouts or suckers, and thinning the remaining fruit to 6 inches apart or so. Wood stove ashes scattered around the drip line of the trees will help produce more and better fruit – the trees love the added potash (potassium ash).

In the garden, now is the time to mound up dirt or barnyard litter around the potato plants, to encourage more and better spuds – if you are growing early potatoes, you will want to reduce watering mid to late July as the plants keel over, and signal that the harvest is ready.

If you plan to continue the garden with late summer plantings of crops that can stand a few mild (early?) frosts (i.e., kale, chard, spinach, beets, radishes, broccoli, carrots), you will want to start the seeds of short-season (60 days or less?) varieties mid-July, so you can transplant in mid-August.

June-bearing strawberry plants will benefit from fertilizing now, while ever-bearing plants would appreciate a fertilizer boost mid-season (mid-July?) – aged cow poo, scattered rabbit poo, comfrey leaf or manure tea will all help.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On July 9^th, our local garden club will be touring a neighboring garden of yet another unsuspecting family:  this month we will check out a large, developed garden featuring raised beds, drip irrigation, grow tunnels, compost bins, and much more.  We will promptly depart from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a short drive, but possibly avoiding the still-under-renovation Elk bridge.  As always, the public is invited to attend our tours, and you can check for more details on this and other club events on our Facebook group page, or here, our club’s on-line blog site.

On July 11^th, those persistent providers of plant pronouncements, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on how you can best harvest vegetables and seeds.  The class will run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension Office, located at 227 South Garden Avenue, Newport, and you may register for the class, or ask pertinent (or impertinent!) questions by calling 509-447-2401.

On the 18th of July, our sister organization, the Backyard Beekeepers, will hold their

monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Deer Park Senior Center - veteran and wanna-be beekeepers will benefit from the local information on raising jungle-heat loving bees in a region where Winter temperatures drop (with some regularity!) below zero Fahrenheit. 

That’s it for this month – so far, so good.