Garden Club Meeting Alert

we will be meeting in Camden grange at 7 p.m., this coming tuesday evening, the 13th of april.  our scheduled speaker is our own steve byars, who will be showing and telling all about his homemade hydroponic garden.  steve will have the materials and tools on hand to show us how to build our own system, so we can grow salads all winter long, and indoors!

also, barbara midtbo will be bringing some samples of her tomatoe offerings, and IF you have ordered tomatoes from barbara, and IF you call/e-mail her to confirm your order, she will bring it to the meeting as well.  you can call her at 509-953-6442, or e-mail her at bamidtbo@gmail.com.

i've attached barbara's final list of tomatoe offerings, so please browse, and order soon!

also also, club secretary/treasurer jane bolz will be there to collect our annual club dues ($5 per person, or $10 per household), and issue club membership cards.

club videographer geoff carson will be video recording the meeting and class, so if you are still on the run from the law, you will want to appropriately seat yourself.

final also, club member joe schofield is looking for work pruning fruit trees in the neighborhood - if you have trees that could use a haircut or new style, experienced pruner joe plans to attend the meeting.  

please remember to bring along some of your favorite snacks or dessert to share with the rest of us, and if you still have unwanted seeds, plants, or books, there will be someone there to rehome them.

see you there, jim.

509-292-0326

Get ready to meet!

Due to a large outpouring of club member demands, our local garden club will be meeting in person at Camden Grange at 7 P.M. on Tuesday, the 9^th of March.

This is a club members only meeting – we are not advertising the event to the public.  It’s just us!  Please do not pass this invitation on to non-club members – the grange hall is commodious, but not big enough for a large crowd of rowdy gardeners.

We will be observing current health guidelines (masks, distancing, recent bathing, etc.).

I understand that some members will not attend due to concerns over indoor meetings.  I hope to arrange a video recording of the meeting, and the class on the topic of “growing food in a short Summer season”, so maybe members can virtually attend.

If you attend in person, please remember to bring any unwanted, garden-related stuff (seeds, seed packets, plants, magazines and/or catalogs, etc.), as well as a favorite dessert/snack of your choice.

Toward the end of the meeting, I will be asking the attending members if they want to continue monthly in-person meetings for the months of April and May, with possible outdoor garden tours for the Summer months.

See you there!

 

Jim.

 

Weeding between the lines for March 2021

By Jim McGinty

 

Looking out my window, at the end of February, all I see is white snow and brown mud – not at all conducive to H.G.T. (Happy Gardening Thoughts), but the promise is still out there.  I tell everyone that gardeners must be the most optimistic people on the planet:  we’re already planning the best ever garden, featuring a complete lack of weeds and back pains, ripe veggies and fruit just falling off the vines into our harvest baskets, and even full cooperation from the Frost Giants.  On further reflection, maybe the correct word describing us gardeners is not “optimistic”, but rather “delusional”.   We’ll know by August, right?

I’m seeing a lack, or a deficiency (one may not use the word “shortage” in print these days) of seed packets in many garden centers and even hardware stores – fewer choices and higher prices.  Even some of the really big names in seed suppliers are restricting purchases to commercial farmers, or are claiming that sales orders have overwhelmed their staff members to the point that they are temporarily limiting new purchases.

Might be time to inventory your own seed bank, and talk with your gardening neighbors about swapping seeds, or you might ask the local public libraries if they are offering a seed exchange program.  

Here at Rancho McGinty, we are starting seeds indoors for early Spring transplants (onions, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, etc.), and also the seeds for those Frost-intolerant, long generation plants (tomatoes, peppers, etc.).

Longtime wife Pat and I are also laying out the 2021 garden on paper (way easier to move pencil marks than to move dirt and raised beds, when the paper version does not match reality J), and checking our garden notes from last year to ensure we plant stuff in new places (“crop rotation” is the official name of the process) – last year’s Colorado Potatoe Beetle babies pop up in last year’s spud bed, and find that this year we planted celery there – starving Beetles – bummer!

If you can get out to the berry garden, now is the perfect time to prune out last year’s canes, the one’s that produced those delicious berries – cut down to the ground all the brown canes, leaving the green or blue canes to do their magic.

If you are raising currents, now is the time to prune out the older (three years old or older) trunks – we’re looking for fruit here, not leaves.

In the orchard, now is the time to finish cutting off all the branches that cross and rub, show Winter damage, or are growing back inside the tree canopies. Also, dormant oil spraying is on the calendar – the oil smothers over-Wintering pests like scale insects, bud moths, leaf rollers, mites, and many other enemies.  Be sure to spray on a plus forty degrees Fahrenheit day – saturate the branches, twigs, and trunk.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On the 11^th of March, those prolific plant protectors, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a free on-line class/panel on the topic of growing small fruits and berries in our often-challenging environment.  You can register for the Zoom discussion, which runs from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M., by calling the Extension office in Newport at 509-447-2401.

That’s it for now – this is a planning month, and not a planting month.  Wait for it – wait for it – Spring will arrive, and possibly soon.

 

End of season (finally!) garden report

Well, here at Rancho McGinty, we had (or suffered) quite the end of the gardening season, with early deep snow and severely cold temperatures, just about the time our veggie produce was due to be harvested!  So, short season, cool weather crops were okay for the most part, but most of the long season, hot weather crops gave up the ghost early to the unexpected hard freeze. Some gardeners in our area of the world reported an excellent gardening season ("What freeze? It didn't freeze at our place!".), as they were excused from the unusual (?) weather conditions of early Winter.  We know who you are, and we are either unreasonably happy for you, or murderously envious.

Flint corn and some squash.

To review:  2020 was a good year for (in no particular order) carrots, potatoes, broccoli, onions, flint corn, cabbage, Korean sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, leeks, celery, asparagus, some tomatoes, some peppers, kohlrabi, and kale.

Aphid-infested Brussels sprouts.

Korean sweet potatoes taste like chestnuts!

Frost damage to tomatoes, but NOT to peppers.

2020 was not a good year for most tomatoes, most peppers, most squash and melons, sweet corn, South American sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, garlic, green beans, and cucumbers.   

Frosted squash vines on 3-D trellis.

Pat's Pepper plants were just starting to produce a boat load of peppers when the September 7 freeze took them out, even though they were covered with floating row cover.  The Anaheims were particularly abundant and were up for harvest; and Pat almost got her Paprika peppers - just a couple more days and they would have been harvested and on the dehydrator for some homegrown Paprika seasoning.  Much the same with the Santa Fe peppers, which she was growing for homemade salsa.  Bottom line, the season just was not hot enough, long enough for most 90-100 day crops to mature.  The Brussels Sprouts (which prefer the cooler weather) produced lots of "baby cabbages" but then the aphids found them. Still trying to figure that one out!

Short season veggie standouts included:  Roy's Calais (aka Abenaki) flint corn (used to grind into cornmeal and corn flour, or used whole as livestock feed), early and late Dutch flat cabbage, Stonehead cabbage, Destiny broccoli, Tall Utah celery, curly blue kale, King Richard leeks, Globe turnips, Ruby Queen beets, Scarlet Nantes carrots, and Danvers Half Long carrots.  Tomatoes:  Wayahead, Chadwick Cherry, Silvery Fir Tree, and Buckabee.  Onions (all intermediate day varieties):  Red Candy Apple, Yellow Candy, and (white) Super Star.  Potatoes:  German Butterball, Purple Viking, and Red Gold.   

Lessons learned:  

Just keep everything covered with double layers of Ree-may (R) or Agribon (R) floating row cover ALL the time, unless the plants need insect or wind pollination - that usually occurs in the morning, so pull off the row cover in the AM, and replace it in the afternoon.  And keep extra sheets and blankets around to cover the heat loving plants when the nights start getting cold.  Yes, it is a pain to have to remove that extra covering in the morning, but your goal is ripe tomatoes and peppers.

Start as many seeds indoors as early as possible, and transplant out when the ground warms up.  Cover with Ree-may immediately just in case...

Start your second garden no later than the end of July.  Cold season veggie starts only, with 72 days or less to maturity.  Pat got two crops of cabbage out of the garden this year by planting starts on this kind of schedule.

Listen to your "gut" and harvest those veggies regularly.  Don't wait until they are mostly all mature.  It is better to have a few fruits of your labor, than watch it all dissolve overnight because the temperature is 50 degrees when you go to bed and, sometime during the night or early morning, it drops to 28 degrees or lower.  

i noticed again, a lack of pollinators (honey bees, bumble bees, even yellow jackets) in our area this garden season, and I think this lack impacted the squash and melon production: one solution is to learn how to pollinate all those delicate yellow flowers my own self, using a small paint brush.  Kinda like a garden pimp.

And most important - if you don't like weeding, check out the weed fabric with pre-cut or pre-burned holes to plant through (Agfabric Easy-Plant Weed Block).  Pat says it is the only way to grow; she used it on her brassica garden and only had to keep the outer edges clear of invading, unwanted plants.

Plan your garden now, is my recommendation, and buy your seeds tomorrow morning - seed shortages in both catalogs and gardening centers are popping up all the time.

jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

 

The end of the 2020 gardening season is upon us, and it seems as though it started only a few months ago!  Oh wait, it did – we saw a late start due to lots of rain and cool temperatures, then 90 degree Fahrenheit days with no rain for two months, and finally some early (even for our weather-challenged region) frosts.  Good thing we gardeners are an adaptable group, though I’m still whining about the total loss of my carefully-nurtured corn patch – sigh.

On the upside, this was an excellent year for all those cool weather crops:  Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, potatoes, turnips, beets, and much more really thrived in the early part of the season.  Lesson learned:  plant cool weather crops earlier, even if the weather seems kinda late-frosty.

Another lesson learned:  we gardeners cannot just supplement water our gardens on the off chance that we will have rain drops actually fall on our precious plants.  Scheduled watering is the answer, and it would literally pay us if we changed our water delivery equipment to more water-conserving systems: change out the Rainbird ® overhead sprayers to drip irrigation or weep hoses, or even irrigation canals (!) would be better than spraying expensive water mists into the hot Summer air.

The big lesson for my long-time gardening partner Pat and I is that we must schedule (like something written on a calendar J!) time to place frost blankets or floating row cover or even light weight flannel sheets over our frost-sensitive plants (tomatoes, peppers, basil, squash (hmmm?), and beans) on the first day of September.  And then leave the covers on until harvest – those sneaky early September frosts were both frustrating and disappointing for us.

Out in the garden, now is the perfect time to plant garlic cloves – pointy side up, four inches deep, six inches between, and in rows at least twelve inches apart.  Garlic likes well-manured soil, and well-drained dirt, and a thick (six inches or so) mulch – I use maple leaves to help reduce Winter frost heaves, and help moderate temperature extremes.

Those big clumps of rhubarb would like you to chop out some pie-shaped sections, and then either replant them or place them in large pots suitable for gifts to the gardening neighbors.  I like to use a sharp spade to remove a section, and then I fill in the open gap with aged manure.

If you have not yet cut out the raspberry canes that bore fruit this year, now is a great time to do so:  cut out the older canes that are now brown, leaving next year’s fruiting canes that are now purple or green.  I prefer to burn all the cane cuttings, thus incinerating any evil cane borers that may be lurking – revenge is mine!

Once the garden space is clear of spent plants (into the compost bins with them, UNLESS they are bug infested or diseased – those are burned as well), and debris, it’s time to spread a thick layer of manure, lawn clippings, some of the aforementioned compost, and maybe even tree leaves or pine needles (no, pine needles are NOT acidic), and then turn it all under, using a roto-tiller, plow, or your favorite garden tool.

Speaking of garden tools, now is a great time to take a look at all those implements, and see if they are in need of repair, replacement, or sharpening – the restful (?) Winter months are ahead of us, and we might profit from some time spent fixing, oiling, or sharpening our very expensive garden paraphernalia.

And speaking of expensive garden stuff, this is the very best time to research, compare and contrast, and purchase our veggie seeds:  a whole lot of us “experienced” gardeners were caught off guard this Spring when we could not find our favorite veggie seed packets in the stores or online.  Seems all the first time gardeners with more time on their hands had cleaned off the shelves – another lesson learned:  buy our seeds early, or maybe not at all!

GARDEN CALENDAR

Our local gardening club will not be holding our annual Harvest Dinner this month – a gathering of our piracy-leaning club members could not possibly meet the stringent group meeting requirements (masks, unsocial distancing, bleach spray??!!).  We’ll meet next year to share our 2020 experiences, and our 2021 gardening hopes.

You can follow our club adventures on our blog, admirably administered by Su here, or by scoping out our Facebook group page, masterfully managed by Geoff.

You can also check out the website for our local, proficient plant propagators, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County, at http://extension.wsu/edu/pendoreille/gardening.  These gardening experts will be offering many on-line classes, and even good (gasp!) advice to the lovelorn, frost-challenged, weed-infested home gardeners such as myself.

See you next year, Jim.

 

 

 

 

camden grange yard sale this weekend

 marylee rozelle reminds us all that camden grange will be filled with lots of interesting and cool stuff to purchase, this weekend, friday, and saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  you just might find that perfect pre-Christmas gift for your favorite gardener - or maybe some more stuff to fill all that empty space in the garage.

also, if you wish to e-mail marylee regarding camden grange donations, her e-mail address is gmamarylee@gmail.com.  our garden club will definitely donate $200 to camden grange this coming week.  

another frost here at Rancho McGinty early monday morning - the Ree-May frost blankets helped, but our garden is looking a little peaked right now.  pat and i agree that next september first, we are going to cover every possible frost-susceptible plant with Ree-May or light flannel sheets, and just leave them covered until harvest.  clearly, we have entered an even more challenging period of time for garden success.

thanks, jim.

Question for garden club members

Our usual monthly camden grange meetings have occurred only once this year, in march, and we probably won't be meeting there again until next spring.  during "normal" years, the grange is able to rent the hall out to families, groups, and clubs to raise funds to pay for utilities, firewood, insurance, etc., but this year none of that happened.  camden grange is financially-challenged, and i personally don't want to see the doors locked, and the grange property return to state grange control.  i propose that the garden club donate our historically appropriate $200 to the grange, though we have had minimal usage of the building this wierd year.

Club members, please let me know what you think on this topic.

if you have not recently visited our club's blogsite Here, or our Facebook club page, please do so: blogmeister Su Chism and Facebook page manager Geoff Carson do a terrific job of keeping us connected, and amused.  

blue skies, smoke-free air, and rain in the forecast - yay!

thanks, jim.

509-292-0326