Garden club August tour!

We will be touring on Tuesday, the 10th of August, departing from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a 25 minute drive to a beautiful, huge garden near Wilderness Lake.  The garden is grown as a food producing project; lots of sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, even non-ornamental squash (still poisonous!), all to feed the gardener's family.  For those of you whose gardens have not been as successful as in past years due to our drought conditions, you won't want to miss this tour.  Please read this entire email for some important information concerning road conditions in the area we are visiting.

Since our last tour of this year will be a garden in the Fertile Valley area off of highway 2, it is important the tour convoy stays together.  To help facilitate a successful arrival, here is a heads-up of the route we'll be taking; we will drive north from the Grange, over Camden Gap and then turn left on Scotia Road to Highway 2, turning south toward Spokane. (At this point, I would tell you to watch for the Pend Oreille County "Fertile Valley Road" sign, but some reprobate recently stole it!)  Anyway, we will turn right onto Fertile Valley Road and proceed toward Wilderness Lake.  Wilderness Lake is a privately-owned lake, and the homes are in a gated community, so the gardener will meet us at the gate and convoy us back to her garden.  (Please be aware that the dirt/gravel roads are not up to even county road speeds (think Madison and Bridges road conditions on steroids but narrower) so we'll all cautiously drive around the corners and up the hills.  The driveway up to the gardener's home is steep and switch-backed (is that a word?), so some club members may want to carpool with a member driving an all-wheel or four-wheel car or truck.  Once at the top of the hill/driveway, please pull forward around the looping driveway so there is room for everyone to park.  Then gather in the driveway so we can open the meeting, make our presentation, and move to the garden as a group.

Should be a fun, final evening for the 2021 club garden touring season.  In September we will have a short, but appropriate, class and maybe an impromptu homegrown veggie competition for:  largest, weirdest, and most deeply disturbing vegetable and/or fruit.

See you this Tuesday at Camden Grange.

jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

 

This is an ongoing year of gardening challenges, and I hope we are all up for the changes and the lessons to be learned.

I know that my garlic patch was pretty pathetic this year, with reduced yields and smaller bulb size, BUT I determined that I will be sure to save the biggest and best bulbs as seed garlic for September planting.  Clearly, the best of the harvest somehow managed to survive and thrive with late cold weather, drought, and intense heat – and it still tastes like great garlic!

Here at Rancho McGinty, the bean plants (green beans, fava beans) are still struggling, as well as the cucumber plants.

Looking good however, are the malignant squash plants which are loving the heat, and surprisingly, the cabbage and kale plants are free of cabbage looper worm holes – that last frost must have killed off the adults and the eggs?  

Also looking like we might have a great harvest are the cool weather (?) crops:  potatoes, onions, leeks, scallions, rutabagas, beets, and the radishes – ohmygosh, are the radishes ever crunchy and delicious!

Overall, not too bad, and we are only mid-way through Summer:  the keys to harvesting actual food will be adequate water, nutrition (manure, fertilizer), and perhaps shade cloth for the plants that look like they might fall victim to sunscald (dry, yellow/brown leaves).

If you have not already thinned your melon/squash/pumpkin vines down to just a couple/three good-looking fruits, now is the time to do so – IF you want to harvest ripe (!), mature edibles, and not a bunch of “almost there” unripe food.

Raspberry and blackberry plants will need a LOT of water now to produce ripe, juicy fruit – don’t stint on the liquids (adding manure tea or compost tea to the base of the plants would also be a great idea).  Once the canes have finished producing fruit, be sure to prune out the expended brown canes – we want the purple/green canes for next Spring’s flowers.

If your potatoes are poking their selves out of the dirt/mulch into the sunlight, be sure to hill some more dirt/mulch over the spuds and some of the lower leaves – believe me, the plants will only make better, bigger, and more potatoes, minus the green skin and contents.

In the orchard, now is a good time to finish thinning the maturing fruit – six inches between fruit is a good minimum – no knocking each other around in the wind equals less bruising, and therefore more excellent goodies.  And don’t forget to prune out all of those suckers – they just take advantage of the energy the struggling trees can otherwise use to make fruit, and stay healthy.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

I am not aware of any face-to-face or zoom gardening classes happening in our area, but you CAN check in with our local gardening club on-line to see what we are doing this month:   elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or you can also check our Facebook page for updates.

That’s it for now – ninety-four degrees at six P.M. today, makes for a long day for the people, livestock, and the green stuff in the garden and orchard.  Water, food, shelter – the basics are true for us all.  Stay cool!

 

 

 

July garden tour

yes, we will be assembling at Camden Grange on 13 July 2021 for a tour of a large-scale family garden near Miller's One Stop - we toured this garden a number of years ago, and the size, quality, and quantity of food this family produces continues to amaze me.  we will depart the Grange at 7 P.M., for the short drive - please remember that the Fridiger Road bridge is out, and some of us will be detouring as well as touring 😁.  our tour garden is a family-sized operation, with enough veggies and fruit for fresh eating, canning, dehydrating, etc.  the family also raises goats, sheep, chickens, and pigs - altogether, a nice, integrated system.

we will also be touring in august for the last time this year - generally, the weather for september evenings is at least unpredictable, and a tad dark for intimate viewing.  we will have an appropriate indoor class, and some of our club's usual camaraderie, snacks, and group craziness.

see you tuesday evening, jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

I’m telling you, the transition from Late Spring to Mid-Summer was a dandy – one day, it was in the lower seventies, Fahrenheit, and the next day the temperatures were (and still are) hovering in the upper nineties, with an occasional spike (gasp!) into the hundreds.  Here at Rancho McGinty, the livestock, the garden, the orchards, and even the humans are still trying to figure out what happened!

In the orchard, the fruit trees are completely devoid of fruit – that last frost killed the struggling blossoms, despite our attempts to wrap the trees in frost blankets (“Ree-May” floating row cover).  Longtime wife Pat and I will be buying apples (say, What??!!) to slice and dehydrate for Winter cobblers.  Additionally, the vulture lawyers for the birds who normally dine on our precious cherry crop have sent threatening letters regarding the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (written with feather quills, no doubt, but it still looks like chicken scratching to me).

Out in the garden, the garlic crop is a bust:  I suspect we will harvest just enough for our own gastronomic purposes, and some for replanting in September, and that will be that.  

On the other hand, the potatoes, onions, leeks, tomatoes, cabbage, kale, and even the inedible/poisonous squash look amazingly good.  

Speaking of tomatoes, I’m trying a new (to me) growing technique for the indeterminate varieties (those tomatoe plants that love to grow tall and spread all over the garden):  I’m attaching the central leaders up to twine hanging from overhead supports, and pruning off the offending lateral branches.  No more out-of-control tomatoe plant monsters?  We’ll see by August.

 

If you do have fruit depending from your tree branches, now is the time to thin those babies so that they don’t bang into each other, and bruise.  Six to twelve inches apart is a good standard, and despite your trauma caused by discarding perfectly good fruit, remember that the more leaves per fruit, the sweeter the fruit.

Out in the garden, now is a great time to plant some Autumn crops:  beets, carrots, bush beans, and other short-season veggies can all be seeded now for late harvest – just remember to plant the seeds a tad (?) deeper than you did your Spring crop seeds.

Be sure to keep an eye (pun intended) on the potatoes that may be peeking out from under the green plants – we want to hill dirt/compost/mulch up over the exposed spuds to prevent the production of solanine (part of the green tint in potatoes exposed to sunlight).  Too much ingested solanine in humans may cause headaches, nausea, and other symptoms I cannot mention in a family-oriented garden column, though I do wonder why the “potentially toxic” solanine has NO effect on the rodents that dine on my hard-won potatoes?

If your raspberry plants have finished producing black, red, purple, or golden goodness, you can safely prune out the tired looking, brown canes, as they are ready for retirement.  

Also, please remember to water and turn your compost piles – all those microbes, earth worms, and insects really need a moist environment all Summer-long, in order to produce your “brown gold”.

Finally, remember to take a moment and enjoy your garden:  all your hard work will produce food that cannot be matched by anything you can buy in the stores, or even at the farmers’ markets.

GARDENING CALENDAR:

On July 8^th, those problematic produce propagators, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer an on-line Zoom class preparing you to answer that perennial question of “what is that plant that is taking over my garden/flower bed/orchard/front room?”.  The class, “Weeds of Pend Oreille County” will run from 6:30 P.M. to 8 P.M., and will be taught by Master Gardener Loretta Nichols.  You can sign up for the class by calling the Extension Office at 509-447-2401 – the cost is $5.

You can also check in on the happenings with our local gardening club here, or at our Facebook page.

During this hot period of our lives, drink lots of water (chilled adult beverages are NOT a recommended substitute!), stay out of the heat when possible, and remember that snow-shoveling weather is only five months away.

 

 

 

June Garden Tour

finally, we are back to touring neighborhood gardens, as we did in the distant past.  we will depart Camden grange at 7 p.m. on tuesday, the 8th of june for a return visit to the garden of stephanie and marlene routt.  a bunch of years ago our club toured their excellent garden, in person, and more recently we virtually toured, courtesy of club videographer geoff carson.  lots of well-thought-out garden improvements/techniques/tips to see, note, and emulate (?) in your own backyard garden.  once again, geoff will be taking images for a Youtube slide show for those club members who are unable to attend.  please do not "drop in" on the routts prior to the tour, as they have actual lives of their own, and though i wonder about their sanity in allowing us to revisit, i do not want any "early birds" to stress them.

additionally, club member norman livesey has donated a LOT of 2021 dated commercial seed packets to club members in need of plant progeny for this year, and in the coming Springs.  if you are interested, be sure to arrive early to the meeting, as they will be available for choosing and picking in tubs on tables in the grange parking lot.  you will want to bring your own containers for your choice of packets.

see you then, jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Weather-whining is something we are all good at, and especially us home gardeners:  we seem to be very hard to please.  It’s either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too much molten lava or too...wait, that last part may be asking for trouble - but you understand what I’m saying.

Just lately, the weather has been “challenging” with very little rain, and cool overnight temperatures, even dipping into the upper 20s Fahrenheit.

Here at Rancho McGinty, we saw a thin skim of ice on Buster the Wonderdog’s water bowl four nights in a row at the end of May.  Our tomato and pepper plants are protesting their lengthy indoor incarceration, while the sweet potatoe slips are turning into slimy sludge (more on the sweet potatoes later).  Long-time wife Pat and I are going to push our luck in early June, and plant (at least) the indeterminate tomatoes:  typically, the indeterminate, climbing types are a little (barely!) more frost-tolerant than their determinate, bushy cousins.  

I am trying a new sweet potato this year, “Beauregard” by name, and allegedly kind of a short season (100 days is “short” ??!!) variety.  I have the sweet potato raised bed ready, and I’m holding off planting the aforementioned stinky slips until actual warmish weather.  That would be in August, so I’m going to push my luck (there is that phrase again), and plant them in early June.  The sweet potato bed is unusual, in that it employs an eight inch mounded “ridge”, covered in black plastic down the length of a skinny box.  The black plastic helps heat up the soil in our cooler climate, and encourages the “jungle-like” growth of the infamous, human-eating vines.  I will cut slits in the plastic, right along the ridge, and plant the nasty-looking slips, provide the slips with a drink of manure tea, and await developments.  Stay tuned.

Out in the garden, the cool-weather crops handled our recent frosts without a qualm:  potatoes, leeks, onions, cabbage, and kale just sneered at the +27 degrees F. temperature.

In the fruit tree orchard, Pat and I actually wrapped the smaller trees and their tender blossoms with floating row cover, as a test to see if we can save the flowers from a frosty death.  Last year, we suffered a late May frost, and we harvested one (1!) apple from over a dozen trees in the South Orchard.  Sad, and discouraged, were we.

Speaking of orchards, now is a great time to prune out those unnecessary, life energy-sucking “water sprouts” from your fruit trees, and if you have actual baby fruit hanging from the branches (lucky you!), be sure to thin the fruit to at least six inches apart to keep them from bumping into each other, as they approach maturity – bruised fruit will not store well.

Out in the garden, now is the time to push your luck and plant corn, lettuce, beans, egg plant (why!!??), squash (ditto!), and radishes – it’s always time to plant radishes – we LOVE “German Giant” radishes.  

If your potato plants are six inches tall (or taller), it’s time to hill up dirt around the plant, leaving just a few leaves showing – the plant will grow taller, very quickly, and the hill will encourage more spuds.  

During this time of few if any nose-to-nose gardening classes and events, please remember to check out our local garden club doings, by looking online at our club’s blogsite here, and/or at our club’s Facebook page, using the same name.

And as always, it’s time to turn over the compost in the bins, and make some more – your neighbors have all the free materials (herbicide-free, of course) you need:  tree and bush leaves, lawn clippings, seed-free straw, and livestock poo.  Just be sure to ask permission, as I don’t want to read about your arrest for the act of “liberating” compost makings.

 

 

Frost alert!

Frost warning for tonight and a couple more nights!

We are expecting a frost tonight and for a while, per various semi-reliable sources, so accordingly prepare your crops!  Heavy-weight floating row cover (Ree-May, Agribon, etc.) will protect your tender plants down to +26 F., probably 😊, or you could use some light-weight flannel sheets, or you can do as some of our gardening neighbors do:  run an extension cord out to the garden, and plug in some of the older, bigger Christmas tree bulb strings  (thrift store or yard sale items) - you might still want to cover the plants and or bed with something to conserve the heat from the bulbs.  Besides, your garden will look cool from space!

Club videographer Geoff Carson has produced another fine class presentation from our 11 May 2021 meeting:  Diane Stutzman from Desert Jewels Nursery spoke to us on the topic of attracting pollinators to our gardens.  You can view the class in it's entirety, complete with background chatter and comments from club members, at the following Youtube links:

The link to Diane’s presentation video is:

https://youtu.be/s5dXk2gd2fM

All of the club’s past videos are in a playlist at the following address: 

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTkJ27-BMI69-RnPfq9Rj_qP9iNhjtmr

High winds, late frost, no rain - weird weather makes our lives...interesting.

jim.