Attention, fans of free flowers!

Frequent garden club blog reader Nancy Dimick has an offer you may not want to refuse: free, and numerous daylilies, ready for you to dig and take home. Nancy said she has "hundreds of the things," and just wants them to go home to a special kind of garden - yours!  

Please call Nancy at 509-292-8771 to make an appointment, and  for directions to her Fertile Valley home. Shovels, garden forks, gloves, large plastic bags, and a determined recycler or two are needed.

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit, with blue skies, and fleecy white clouds – what better time to plant our favorite tomatoes and peppers out in the open garden – but wait!  

Those garden centers are salivating at the thought of you putting your expensive starts outside, and then WHAM!, we have a frost overnight, and you rush right down to those same plant people and buy some more!  Sort of a “lather, rinse, repeat” cycle until mid-June or so – or, OR, you could just wait a little longer (I do know that our local gardeners are not the most patient of people), and save money, time, and frustration (and a few tears – sob). 

The gardening old-timers in our area always told me to wait until the snow has melted off the north face of Mount Spokane before planting sensitive plants outdoors – the problem being that if we wait too long, the tomatoes, peppers, and most anything with a long growing season will not mature before our first killer frost. Thus, our gardening quandary:  plant early, and hope for no late frosts, or plant late, and hope for no early frosts.  

Here at Rancho McGinty, we hedge our garden bets by planting a few “volunteers” (read “sacrifices”) early, and then plant additional waves of plants that will either replace those first brave (but dead) starts, or that will supplement the harvest if no frosts occur.  And yes, we do occasionally have a mid-summer frost – we keep “frost blankets” or floating row cover (brand names of “Ree-May” or “Agribond”) ready to toss over precious plants when colder temperatures threaten.

Now is a great time to amend your garden soil with a final addition of compost, leaves, or aged manure – I like to rototill this layer and then prepare the seed bed, as it is seeding time for some of the cool weather crops:  peas, beets, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, radishes, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips, etc.  

In the strawberry beds, now is a terrific time to pull off any mulch or covering, but remember to wait until blossoms appear before applying a thin sprinkling of fertilizer or manure – we want tasty strawberries, not lush leaf growth.

Speaking of berries, now is the time to plant or transplant new blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc. – remember to allow LOTS of growing space around the plants – as an example, we like to space to space the raspberry rows about 8 feet apart, thus leaving a “scratch-free zone” of about 2 feet for plant maintenance and berry harvest. Speaking of scratching, now is the time to prune out all of last year’s fruit-bearing canes – you can cut out all of the brown canes, leaving six or so of the green or purple canes per foot of row, that will produce berries this year.

This is also a great time to plant fruit trees, and perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb, and horseradish – in fact, this is a great time to be outside in the garden, breathing the clean, fresh spring air, and feeling the sun’s heat, and, well, just being alive – and knowing that you can safely store the snow shovels.

GARDENING CALENDAR

On the 8^th of May, our local gardening club will meet in Camden Grange at 7 p.m., for our last indoor spring meeting, as we will start touring neighborhood gardens in June. This month we will have another guest speaker and topic (additional details will be available here) as well as our usual “please take this home with you” table, lots of snacks and drinks, rumors and counter-rumors, and a lot of fun.

On the 12^th of May, plan to attend the Garden Expo, held at Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The annual event is free, as is parking, and is THE place to purchase plants, garden equipment and supplies, and seek professional gardening advice from folks who actually know what they are talking about.  With hundreds of vendors, and delicious food opportunities, the event is an all-day affair, with classes and demonstrations, guest speakers, and you are likely to bump into a gardening someone you know! Even if you are “just looking”, be sure to bring a conveyance (wagon, cart, pack mule) as you will likely find something perfect for your garden.

That’s it for this month – plenty to do, and dry, warm weather in which to do it.  See you in the garden.

Notes and reminders

Camden Grange pancake breakfast and auction is on Saturday,  April 21: BIG breakfast from 8-10 a.m., then the auction proceeds from 10 a.m. The event benefits OUR Grange, so please donate something (you can call Mary Lee Rozelle at 509-292-2492 for more details or to arrange a donation pick up or drop off), or show up to eat and then bid on some cool items.

The Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners will hold their annual plant sale Saturday, April 28, from 9 a.m. to noon, in the Stratton Elementary gymnasium (1201 W. Fifth St., Newport). This is THE place to purchase your garden, flower, shrub and tree starts, and you will be able to ask gardening questions of people who actually know what they are talking about!

The next garden club meeting is on Tuesday, May 8, and we will definitely have a better seating arrangement for all 35 (!) or more of us. We will have a class on something garden-ish, so stay tuned for further details; and yes, we did have EXCELLENT snacks for the April meeting - thank you!

Garden Expo at Spokane Community College is Saturday, May 12, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with over 250 vendors. It's a great place to buy almost any plant or garden thing you can conceive, so bring a cart or wagon, and some money.

Elk Pioneer Days garden club booth is a happenin' thing, so let me know if you want to sit in the park on June 16 for a couple of hours - we will have a rotating roster of members to recruit, amuse, and annoy our neighbors, and maybe sell a few plants (perennials, fruit bushes, herbs, flowers, etc. - if you are growing some for yourself or others, you might want to consider donating a few to the club?), and answer a few garden-related questions.

Jim

Garden club meeting warning notice!

We will assemble at Camden grange, at 7 p.m., tomorrow evening (10 April, 2018) for our monthly meeting. Please bring your favorite snacks and drinks, as we have a full evening ahead: Pend Oreille County Master Gardener Marge Helgeson will be showing us how to propagate plants (better to make more of our favorite plants than call them weeds, and toss them out!), snacks and drinks (the club will provide hot drinks), rumors and some truths about each other, and more. If you have duplicates of garden seed and equipment catalogs, or extra seeds and plant starts, please bring them along for the "I don't have room to store all this stuff" table.

Jim

Free plant pots

Hello all -

Even though the weather cannot make up its mind, I am sure many of you are still planning a garden this year. One the club members, Carolyn Hargrave, is no longer gardening at the level she once enjoyed, and therefore has quite a few pots of varying sizes (especially one gallon) she would like to donate to whomever is interested. All you have to do is call Carolyn at 509-863-3346 and make arrangements for pick up. Take as many or as few as you can use. She needs to clear them out quickly so don't wait to call (snooze and you lose). As with many of us, she may not answer when you call but leave a message and she will get back to you.

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Spring sprang, I think – at this point, the last few days of March 2018, there is no snow anywhere on Rancho McGinty – though we have not placed the snowshovels in storage!

Out in the open garden, the compost piles are coming back to life, with daytime steam emanating from the mixture of last year’s maple leaves and barnyard poo. Also, the garden soil is softening, and I am finding just how many garden projects I forgot, or failed to finish before last year’s first snowfall. If there is good news out there in the garden, it’s that I am finding some missing/never-noticed tools, and there is the (possibly misconstrued) concept that this year’s garden will be our best garden ever! I anticipate lush green growth, tons of delicious produce, few if any evil-doing diseases and insects, and loud acclamation from passing and envious motorists.  

Out in the orchard, this spring’s fuzzy buds are out on the fruit tree branches, signaling that pruning season is about to end: we don’t prune once those precious buds start to break open, and we wait to further prune until all the leaves are full sized. If you have not already sprayed your expensive fruit trees with dormant spray, you have a couple of weeks when the daytime temperatures will be in the 40s Fahrenheit. Dormant spray kills/suffocates a host of overwintering pests:  scale, leaf roller, coddling moth larvae, mealy bugs, and mites, all of which will compete with you for homegrown fruit.

If you are waiting to plant or transplant fruit bushes or trees, now is a perfect time – remember the old adage, “$25 tree, $200 hole” (actually, I just made up that old adage), so be sure to dig a hole three times the diameter of the root ball, plant the tree in a rodent-defeating wire basket if you have this issue, backfill with good soil mixed with compost, and soak the tree roots thoroughly to remove air pockets, and to hydrate those important root fibers.  

By mid-April, you may be able to rototill or dig into the garden soil some composted manure and/or organic matter (you DID remember to accumulate/beg for your neighbor’s black plastic trash bags of tree leaves last autumn?!).  

I anticipate continuing nightly frosts until the end of April and into early May, based on my years of painful (and expensive) plant replacements (sob!).

This IS a good time to divide that immense rhubarb plant by using a sharp shovel to slice out about a quarter of the root (you can replant the slice, or trade it to a neighbor), and fill in the empty space with some aged manure – your rhubarb plant will reward your effort!

Likewise, your asparagus crowns will appreciate a few shovel loads of manure – remember to call me at the time of harvest!

If you are waiting to start some veggie seeds indoors, now it the time to begin Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, eggplants (why?!), leeks, onions, tomatoes, and lettuce.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On April 10, our local garden club will meet in Camden Grange, located at 21 Elk-

Camden Road, Elk, at 7 p.m. to talk about our 2018 garden plans, learn how propagate new plants from existing plants or “liberated” plants (as my beloved gardening partner and wife Pat refers to abandoned or underused plants found on the wayside), and to confirm or deny rumors started when certain members “forgot” to attend the March meeting. Our meetings are always open to the public, and both new and experienced gardeners always learn something new at each meeting.  You can always check on our club doings by checking here at the blog.

On April 12, those gleeful gardening gurus the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners will offer a class from 6:30-8:30 p.m., on developing healthy garden soil using both purchased and locally-developed amendments. You can register for the class, which costs $5 per person, by calling the WSU Extension Office at 509-447-2401. The class will be held in the Extension Office, which is located at 227 S. Garden Ave., Newport.

On the 21st of April, the Master Gardeners will be back with a class on raising healthy trees and shrubs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., in the CREATE center at 900 W. Fourth St., Newport.  The class will begin with indoor classroom work, then proceed outside for show-and-tell, and some simple pruning techniques, so dress for the weather.  The class costs $5 per person, and you can register for the class by calling that same 509-447-2401 phone number.

And on the 28^th of April, those busy botanical bargainers will hold their annual Master Gardener Plant Sale, from 9 a.m. to noon, in the Stratton Elementary gymnasium (1201 W. Fifth St., Newport). This is THE place to purchase your garden, flower, shrub and tree starts, and you will be able to ask gardening questions of people who actually know what they are talking about!

That’s it for this month – time to slowly tilt the recliner forward, and take a step towards the light.

Garden club meeting warning!

We will be assembling in Camden grange tonight, the 13th of march, at 7 p.m., for our first meeting of 2018.  We will have a short class on easy seed starting, a question and answer session, some rumor mongering about every member not present, and we will discuss what we want to change/improve in this year's garden.  If you have unwanted, current garden seed and equipment catalogs, please bring them along for our "I don't want to take it home with me" table.  also, if you have unwanted seeds or plant starts, you could bring them along as well.

Members are asked to bring snacks or treats, and the club will provide drinks as well.

Remember that this is a new year, and club dues are payable to our esteemed club treasurer, Jane Bolz:  memberships are still $5 per person, or $10 per family.

See you then, 

Jim.