Garden club meeting tonight!

we will be assembling at camden grange and community center (located at 7 camden road, elk, wa) at 7 p.m. on tuesday, 09 april to discuss things garden-y.  time to talk and wish, time for a short class on home garden composting (hosted by a panel of local do-ers), and time to snack on the various offerings brought to the meeting by our own club members (hint!).  the freebie table will be in operation again, so if you have excess garden stuff (tools, supplies, seeds, plant starts, etc.), please bring them along.  club treasurer jane will be collecting 2024 dues ($5 per person, or $10 per family), and issuing club membership cards (don't forget the discount code for northwest seed and pet purchases, located on the back of the card!).

see you there!

jim.

509-292-0326

Garden club ads —March 15

couple of things since our recent club meeting:

club member steve peterson is looking for more herb plants (edible, culinary, and medicinal) to add to his expanding garden.  if you have spare, or runaway weeds (i mean "runaway herbs", LOL), please call him at 509-292-0950, and he will be glad to help you.

we club members have a stack of reuseable, rehomed domed plastic containers that would be perfect for keeping all those precious plant starts alive this spring.  need some, call me at 509-292-0326, and we will arrange.

club treasurer jane bolz reminds us all that our 2024 club membership cards (yours for only $5 per person, $10 per family) have a secret code on the backside that will generate a discount (don't know how much yet, but it was 15% in 2023) at spokane's "northwest seed and pet" stores.  garden-related materials only (NO gerbils or goldfish!), and be sure to let the cashier know about the secret code BEFORE they ring up your purchase(s).

during the recent club meeting, rachael wallin brought a big pot of baked beans; those beans were so tasty, that members are asking for the recipe!  

GRANDMA HONEY'S BAKED BEANS

preheat oven to 325 degrees f. 

1 pound dry beans (navy beans?), soaked overnight, drained the next morning, and cooked (typically the beans are covered with 2 inches of water, brought to a boil, then simmered for an hour, then drained again, and rinsed in cold water)

in a dutch oven, cook 8 pieces of bacon, chopped

add one chopped onion, cook until a little brown

add 4 chopped cloves of garlic, cook one minute

add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

add 2 tablespoons of ketchup

add 1/4 cup molasses

add half cup of brown sugar (rachael used a heaping tablespoon of brown sugar, instead)

add 1 teaspoon smoked paprika

stir together all the above

add cooked beans

stir together all the above

salt and pepper to taste

cover with dutch oven lid, and bake at 325 degrees f. for 3 hours - may need to occasionally add hot water to keep the liquid just barely covering the beans

let cool, and eat!

thank you rachael!  if club members have recipe questions, they can contact rachael at rachaelwallin77@gmail.com

thanks, jim.

509-292-0326

garden club ads — March 23

couple of things popped up recently:

club member steve peterson is in the early stages of building a new HUGE herb (medicinals, edible, and culinary) garden at his home.  steve is still looking for donations of herbs, and is more than willing to dig up/pick up unwanted plants.  you can contact him at 509-292-0950, or at swp001@yahoo.com

club member brittany davis is looking for a goat-milking stanchion - any spares out there?  you can contact her at brittdavis5269@gmail.com

the managers of our local camden grange farmers' and artisan's market are asking if our garden club members would like to sell (or trade?) locally-grown plant starts, produce, or garden stuff at the monthly market, scheduled to start on 11 may, 1-3 p.m., and every second saturday until december.  you can contact melissa wiens at ridgesandbridgesfarm@gmail.com for details.

cooler temperatures, rain, snow - must be Spring?

thanks, jim.

509-292-0326

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

 

I keep hearing the “rumor” that it really is Spring, and not the tail-end of Winter, but it’s snowing outside right now, with intermittent rain and hail.  NOT especially conducive to outdoor gardening (or farm chores, for that matter, LOL), but perfect weather to plan the 2024 garden, and order necessary seeds and equipment.

Wife Pat and I tried the “EarthBox” ® garden on the front deck last Summer, and found that most veggies (especially salad veggies, like tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, etc.) LOVE to grow in a container garden.  Root crops (potatoes, onions, carrots, etc.) on the other hand, just know that they are being forced to live in a small box, and hate it!  

Yes, we did harvest some small onions and spuds, skinny carrots, golf ball-sized beets, but overall I recommend planting the underground veggies in real dirt in the open garden, weeds and all.

Our garlic spears are up six inches out of the straw mulch, and are already dark green, while the out-of-control strawberry plants have started to leaf out – time to add some aged chicken manure and compost, or for those who use such, some balanced 10-10-10 fertilizer.

Many knowledgeable folks add Epsom Salt to their strawberry bed, starting now, and monthly until end-of-season:  Epsom Salt (really magnesium sulfate) sweetens the soil, and that makes for sweeter fruit.  Two tablespoons into warm water to dissolve, and spray or water-can the plants – just don’t apply the solution on a sunny, hot day, as it will burn the leaves.

Our still-cooler weather makes for great outdoor, open garden cool-weather seed starting for spinach, radishes, beets, carrots, dill, kohlrabi, turnips, etc.  If you can find plant starts, the following should appreciate the cool weather, and get you off to an early beginning:  Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale.  I use the face-saving word “should” appreciate the cool weather, because we never know – I would place floating row cover (“Ree-May ®, or “Agribon” ®) over the transplants just in case of a late severe frost or meteor strike.

In the orchard, now is the time to apply dormant oil spray to smother all those evil insects hiding under the bark:  aphids, mealy bugs, thrips, scale, and white flies.  Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s directions, and DO NOT apply oil spray after the tree’s fuzzy leaf buds start to appear.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

Our local garden club will meet on 09 April, at 7 P.M., in Camden Grange and Community Center (located at 7 Camden Road, Elk, WA), for an evening of informative fun.  We’ll have a class on how to grow food in our neighborhood, despite our challenging weather conditions, and we’ll have time to socialize, dine on club member-provided snacks, and maybe take home some gardening stuff (plant starts, seed packets, knee and back liniment) from the freebie table.

Our meetings are always open to the public, and you check out our club’s doings at our blogsite: www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or look at our Facebook page of the same name.

That’s it for now – see you out in the garden.

Garden club meeting warning

we will be meeting for the first time this year on tuesday, the 12th of march, at 7 p.m. in camden grange and community center (located at 7 camden road, elk, wa).  we will have a short class on "winter sowing" techniques, and the value thereof, from club member lorelei wright, and will hear what she plans for her 2024 garden (and our challenging weather inputs, LOL).

club members are asked to bring some of their favorite snacks, and any seed packets/plant starts they want to donate to the elk seed and start giveaway scheduled for 27 april at inland grange.  giveaway organizer cheryl joy will be at the meeting with talk with us about this important effort to reestablish home gardens in our neighborhood.

as always, there will be lots of time to impress each other with our 2023 garden results (mythical, though they may be, LOL), and lots of time to socialize and catch up.

see you then, jim mcginty

509-292-0326

Weeding between the lines

Well, it’s been a memorable Summer, with our local wildfires, record heat, and record drought, not to mention (?) much higher consumer prices for just about everything we buy. 

That latter reason (“higher prices”) is reason enough to grow at least some of your own food, though our recent growing conditions have been more than the normal challenge.

As gardeners, we do have some things we can do to adapt to heat and scarce rainwater.  Heat mitigation suggestions:  buy and plant veggies that can handle (or love!) the heat (tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, etc.), avoid veggies that cannot handle the heat (cabbage, kale, peas, broccoli, etc.), use shade cloth to lower the felt temperatures on the plants, interplant taller/denser plantings with smaller/shorter plants that appreciate the shade and moisture (ex., lettuce under trellised squash plants). 

To help with all that missing cloud moisture, some watering suggestions:  wisely water in the early morning using battery-powered timers, avoid watering overhead (ala “Rainbird”-type sprinklers), use drip irrigation to apply water only to the base of the plants, infrequently water, only water when necessary.

Here at Rancho McGinty, we use a LOT of drip irrigation in our few remaining raised beds, and the “Earth Boxes”, used in our new-to-us gardening scheme, require only that we fill up the bottom of the boxes with water every other day.

“Earth Boxes”, and all their clones, have a hydroponic chamber under the planting soil, so that the plant roots directly (and efficiently) water themselves.

Our garden boxes are producing a lot of kale, late cabbage (not many heads forming out there, probably due to the heat), cucumbers, onions, beets, tomatoes, and peppers.  The trellised (and yes, poisonous!) squash plants are weighted down by football-sized fruit:  I seeded six different squash varieties, and ONLY the spaghetti squash is visible.  I think the recent high temperatures may have caused pollination problems – the pollen of some of those “jungle” plants (tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, etc.) is sterile above eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit or so, and we have certainly exceeded that limit, for weeks on end.

In the berry patch, now is a good time to prune out the spent canes that bore fruit this season:  brown or yellow canes come out, and leave the green or blue canes for next year’s berries.  Be sure to dispose of the pruned canes, as the cane borers love to overwinter in your berry patch debris.

In the fruit tree orchard, now is the time to watch for overloaded branches:  I failed to prop up a pear tree branch laden with fruit, and it just recently snapped off, with ten nearly perfect pears, all of which were almost ready to harvest (the chickens found the pears to be delicious, though our daily egg count did not improve – those feathered slackers!).

GARDENING CALENDAR:

On the 12^th of September, our local garden club will meet at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange and Community Center (located at 7 Camden Road, Elk, WA) for an indoor gathering (it’s too dark for another outdoor Summer garden tour).  We will socialize, whine and weep over our 2023 gardening efforts, and eat (probably healthy) snacks.  Our indoor meeting will feature a class, taught by Pend Oreille County Master Gardener Kamori Cattadoris, on the topic of planning for the 2024 garden:  now more than ever, we need to “get it right” in the garden so we can continue to grow fresh, nutritious food for our families.  All of our club activities are open to the public, and free of cost – you can check out those club activities by accessing our club blog at www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or by looking at our same named Facebook page.

On the 14^th of September, the aforementioned Kamori will offer a class on edible landscaping (she really is a great, and extremely busy Master Gardener) from 6:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. via the Zoom venue.  In this class, Kamori will help you to choose plants that not only beautify your castle’s surroundings, but also provide food for you, your family, and your gardening serfs.  You can register for the $5 class, and learn how to connect to Zoom by calling the W.S.U. Extension Office at 509-447-2401.

That’s it for the month – continue to be safe in the heat and sunlight out there: lots of water, salt tablets, wide-brimmed hats, sunblock, and limit your time in the garden to those cooler hours – there will be cooler hours, right?!

 

Garden club July tour

we will depart from camden grange and community center, located at 7 camden road, elk, wa, at exactly (!) 7 p.m. this coming tuesday evening, the 11th of july, for a very short drive to a local, family-owned and operated veggie and fruit farm.  lots to see and learn:  hoop houses, greenhouses, raised beds, drip and spray irrigation in the open garden, washing machine salad spinners, and much more.

prior to our departure, we will once again see the "freebie table" at the grange, with donations from club members of unwanted, but still useful gardening-related stuff:  plants, seeds, tools, and maybe some produce (?), so please bring something, and/or check out the table and it's offerings - there must be something there you can use!

i've enclosed the much-requested recipe for the delicious rhubarb dessert we enjoyed at june's tour of lorelei and ben's farm:

GRANDMA JOAN RISER'S RHUBARB CRUNCH

Recipe size for 9” x 9” pan, grease pan, 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes

 

Crumble mixture:

1 cup flour

¾ cup oatmeal

½ cup melted butter

1 cup brown sugar

Mix together and press ½ the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Save half for the topping.

 

On this put 4 cups of diced rhubarb

 

In a sauce pan mix:

1 cup sugar

4 tablespoons of cornstarch

1 cup water

1 teaspoon of vanilla

This is where I ran low of sugar and substituted a scoop of powdered Country Time Lemonade mix. (The first ingredient is sugar)

Stir constantly until thick and then pour over the rhubarb

 

Add the remaining crumble mixture to the top and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

thank you to lori riser for the recipe!

jim.

509-292-0326