Garden club meeting warning

we will assemble at 7 P.M. in camden grange and community center (7 camden road, elk, wa 99009) for our first meeting of 2022, on tuesday, 08 march.  unless we have a monster heat wave (and subsequent monster flooding from all the snow and icecrete melt), we probably won't be gardening any time soon, BUT, we can plan, dream, and prevaricate about our best ever 2022 garden at our meeting.  we will socialize and reacquaint ourselves with other members also emerging from hibernation, and generally have fun.  club members marlene and pam will present a in-depth class on garden seed starting, and there will be freebie goodies on the club's give away table.

speaking of which, club members are asked to bring along any unwanted, viable seed packets or plants, and maybe a few of those unwanted, current, lying-through-their-teeth-with-all-those-beautiful-and-unlikely-veggie-photos-and-descriptions seed catalogs.  if you have unwanted, gardening-related books, or useful garden tools (is there a gardener who does not have too many tomatoe cages??!!), please bring them to the meeting to be re-homed.

club members are asked to bring some of their favorite snacks to share.

some folks have asked about local gardening classes:

march 13 - general for everyone gardening class by dawn trammel, 2 P.M., at the Diamond Lake Seventh-day Aventist Church (326002 Highway 2, Diamond Lake).  this class is free.

March 19 - fruit tree pruning class by yours truly, 1-3 P.M. at the aforementioned camden grange and community center.  Cost is $5, and you can register for this class at events_classes@camdengrange.org

see you at the meeting, jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

 

Just looking out the window at all the snow and icecrete (yes, it’s a new word, and totally descriptive for what is underlying those 14 inches of crusty snow!), it’s hard to imagine that a few months from now, we will be seeing brown dirt and green growing things.

This is a good time to snuggle up to the heater with all your notes from last year’s garden (you DID write down what you learned from your 2021 gardening experience, right!?), and this year’s seed catalogs, and plan your best ever garden for 2022.

Think about what you want to grow and eat this year:  more specialty gardens (salsa, salad, grains, etc.), or maybe something new and unique (TONS of new tomatoes and peppers this year!), or maybe the old standards that you rely on for comfort food (potatoes, sweet corn, garlic).  

Think about what grew well last year, and what was worth harvesting, and eating:  mouth-watering vine-fresh tomatoes, crunchy sweet corn, baked potatoes with all the fixin’s (I always wanted to use that word in print, LOL).  

Think about what did not grow well in your micro-climate, or what produced lots of leaves (and promises), and produced only shattered dreams.  Maybe this is the year you learn to eat what will grow in your garden, and maybe this is the year you finally realize that your garden is NOT going to produce those big, 100-day beefsteak tomatoes, due to a shortness of sunny, warm days.  That’s okay – you’ll just have to grow some of those 70-day, medium-sized tomatoes, and slice them thin and stack them tall on your hamburger bun!

So, check out those gloriously-illustrated seed catalogs (with the understanding that those photos have all been “processed” to look good, and make you want to buy those seeds), and select something that will inspire you to look forward to fertilizing, planting, watering, weeding, and all those other garden tasks that will make your brief summer worthwhile.  Remember please, that seed shortages are already showing up in the aforementioned catalogs, so order early!

Even with snow on the ground, now is a great time to sprinkle woodstove ashes around the drip line of your fruit trees and berry bushes – those guys love (!) potash (potassium ash), and will reward you with more,  and higher quality fruit.

If you have not already bought or made the dormant spray for your orchard, now is a good time to investigate and purchase or make that insect/scale smothering goodness – though it’s still too early to spray.

This is also a good time to pull out the pruning tools, and de-rust, sharpen, and oil them ahead of use:  pruning and limb-training time is almost here, and besides, the manual labor involved in readying your equipment is good for your mind and hands.  

If you start your own plant starts from seeds, now is the time to bring inside and warm up the seed-starting soil, equipment, tools, and the seeds themselves, and get ready for the show!  Pretty quick, it will be time to start the Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflowers, and other spring cold-weather hardy plants.

I have seen desperate gardeners covering their raised beds with black plastic film, in hopes of an early, sunny start to the season, while other folks lay heat cables, normally used to combat roof ice buildup, onto the snow and ice. Desperate times, desperate measures, LOL.

 

GARDENING CALENDAR:

On the 8^th of March, our local gardening club will meet for the first time this year, from 7 P.M. to about 9 P.M., in Camden Grange and Community Center (7 Camden Road, Elk, WA  99009).

We’ll commiserate over the 2021 gardening adventure, and expand on our newly-gained horticultural knowledge (gains and losses from last year’s garden).  We will learn all about veggie seed starting in a short (30-45 minute) class conducted by our own Marlene, complete with handouts, and lots of time for questions and (hopefully!) answers.  

You can check out the club’s doings by looking at our blogsite (www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or at our Facebook page of the same name.

On the 26^th of March, I will be teaching a fruit tree pruning class at the aforementioned Camden Grange and Community Center, from 1-3 P.M.

We will talk about what you can do to encourage healthy tree growth, improved fruit production, and what to do about those pesky pests and dread diseases.  Cost for the class is $5, and a handout is provided, along with an opportunity to watch a sacrificial (but willing!) tree be pruned and trained in an appropriate manner.

That’s it for the month of March – stay warm, stay flexible, and enjoy your “time off from spring chores.”

 

Harvest Dinner… upgrades?

tomorrow evening, please bring any of your "unusual" or "weird" garden veggies or fruit:  rutabagas shaped like one of the lower 48 states?  perfect.  squash shaped like a small foreign car?  that's the one.  potatoe with legs?  yes.

also, if you have spare produce (NOT lugs or crates of stuff) to share, we'll have a table for that as well:  we have extra cucumbers to bring.

also, due to customer demand, my wife and gardening companion, pat, will bring some of her locally-famous flavored goat cheese:  available in garlic, dill, and ranch flavors, 4 ounces for $4.  really good stuff.

thanks, jim.

Harvest Dinner reminder

yes, this is an actual reminder for you!  we will be assembling in Camden Grange and Community Center at 7 P.M. this coming tuesday, the 12th of october, for our annual garden club potluck Harvest Dinner.  Please bring your favorite side dish, dessert, bread/rolls, beverages, etc. - the club will provide ham, and fried chicken (yay, "Yokes" delicatessen!).  Also, if you are a holder of a genuine garden club Garden Tour Gnome (lucky you!), please bring the little guy along for their annual conclave.  

We will sumptuously dine, exchange personal rumors and gardening tips, and tell each other what worked and what did not work in our gardens, this year.

side note:  the Elk Park Committee asked us to plant extra pumpkins next year, so they can have a pumpkin patch at their Fall Festival next Autumn - kids can pick their own pumpkins for home carving sort of thing.  so please, plan on raising some cain and also a few spare pumpkins.

see you at the dinner, jim.

Weeding between the lines

WEEDING BETWEEN THE LINES

By Jim McGinty

End of the 2021 garden season, with a couple of “early” (?) frosts in mid-September for many areas of our local community.  Here at Rancho McGinty, I just barely managed to cover the “jungle crops” (cucumbers, and squash) with floating row cover before our low temperatures of +26 degrees Fahrenheit.  So far, the cucumber plants and fruit are still in good shape, and as one might expect, the poisonous squash plants survived to ruin the appetites of folks with functioning taste buds.

Lessons learned this year, out in the garden:  place pre-measured and cut floating row cover near the plants you want to protect (don’t wait until the night of the frost warning!), drip irrigation under black weed block (with pre-cut growing holes) is a GREAT combination for raising onions, leeks, and shallots, drip irrigation with a fertilizer irrigator (“fertigator” – ours is a “Chapin” #4701 inline injector) makes for amazing crops (especially those hungry feeders like corn, squash, pumpkins, and onions), vining crops love to grow up trellises (and that saves you valuable flat garden space), spring-loaded plant support clips (ours are “KingLake” brand) help control those uncontrollable blackberry vines and indeterminate tomatoe branches and stems, weedy gardens still produce a LOT of food, and the big take away for this weather-challenged garden season is (cue all the former and current Boy Scouts of America) Be Prepared for rain, snow, wind, drought, heat, and a lot of “anomalies” you may not have previously experienced in your garden.

In the garden, now is the time cut down all the spent plants, and toss them into the compost heap (except the disease/pest-covered plants – those are best safely burned or trashed).  Please remember to water the compost heaps, as the living occupants need moisture to make all that “brown gold” you want for next Spring.

Now is also a good time to amend the garden soil with manure, leaves, or compost – you will have to decide whether to rototill it all under before Winter, or let it sit on the surface and let the snow do the work for you until Spring.

This is also a good time to prune asparagus, raspberries, blackberries, thyme, and sage, and if you have vast fields (also called “drifts” by the flowering bulb aficionados) of bulbs, and want to thin the numbers, now is the time to dig up and gently work the bulb clusters apart with your fingers, and replant.  Don’t forget to plant your garlic!!

Finally, this is the time to review which plant varieties grew best in our newly-weird garden season weather.  We can recommend “Alaska”, “Sweet Israeli”, and “Optimus” tomatoes, “Dragon Shoyu” cucumbers, “Thelma Sanders” and “Table Queen” acorn squash, “White Globe” radishes, “Dwarf Blue Curly” kale, “Frog Island” purple fava beans, “King Richard” leeks, “Texas Giant” white onions, and any of the “candy” series of onions (red, and yellow).

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On the 12^th of October, our local garden club will hold its last 2021 meeting and annual Harvest Dinner at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange and Community Center.  This being a potluck dinner, club members and friends are encouraged to bring their favorite side dish (made from your garden ingredients!), bread/rolls, dessert, and drinks.  If you are a holder of a coveted Garden Club Tour Gnome, remember to bring him along, as they hold a parallel conclave while we dine and commiserate over this year’s gardening experience.  You can keep up with our club’s activities by checking our website (www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com), or by accessing our Facebook page.

On the 13^th of October, Camden Grange and Community Center will offer a class on dehydrating veggies and fruit, from 7 – 9 P.M.  Taught by Lauri Chamberlin, the class will offer instruction and tips on safely converting all those baskets of produce into delicious munchies and cooking ingredients that will last MUCH longer than they would in the back of your refrigerator.  Class cost is a paltry $5 per person, which includes a handout and the opportunity to ask questions of someone who actually knows what they are doing!

That’s it for now, and for this garden season – our 2022 gardens will be WAY better than this year’s garden!

September meeting warning notice

we will be meeting tuesday evening, the 14th of september, at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange.  we will have a short class, at member request, on how to wrap up our gardens before the onset of winter, and then a demonstration, by club members marlene and stephanie, on how to make those cool garden-art LED-light filled jars and bottles.  following a snack break, we'll tackle questions and answers, 2021 garden experiences, and start rumors about YOU if you are not in attendance.  members are asked to bring some of their favorite snack items, and the club will provide hot drinks.  

next month, our meeting will consist of our annual potluck Harvest Dinner, to which members bring side dishes, desserts, bread objects, and so forth.  the club will provide a meat-like substance, or recently-harvested (but in good condition!) roadkill as a main dish, and the club will also provide hot and cold drinks.  for those lucky few, now is the time to dust off your Garden Gnome(s) - jus' sayin'!

the Grange main hall is currently filled with great stuff from the recent yard sale benefitting Camden Grange, so if you see something you just gotta have, you can make an offer during the meeting to club member/Grange member Marylee Rozelle.

speaking of Camden Grange, Friends of Camden Grange are reminded of the lunch potluck/reorganization meeting on saturday, the 18th of September at 1 P.M. in the aforementioned Camden Grange.  'Nuff said!

see you at one or more of the meetings, jim.

509-292-0326

August garden tour slides

we will shortly have the slideshow from the august garden tour up and available for your viewing pleasure on the club's blogsite here, and on the club's facebook page.  thanks to our tour hosts Carol and Scott Wood, and thanks to club videographer Geoff Carson for the excellent sideshow.  as always, thanks to our club blogmeister Su Chism, and to Facebook page administrator Geoff Carson for their continuing efforts to educate and entertain us.

our september meeting will be indoors at Camden Grange, on the 14th at 7 p.m., so be sure to mark your appointment calendar.  

in this heat (99 degrees F. today), i hope your garden is thriving and staying wet.  i know it's traumatic to think beyond your next iced drink, but now is the time to plant short season (60 days or less) seedlings/starts for that autumn garden:  cabbage, kale, radishes, broccoli, lettuce, etc., will probably (?!) be ready to harvest before the first breath of winter.

be careful out there, jim