October garden club meeting and dinner

we will meet at 7 p.m. in camden grange and community center (located at 7 camden road, elk, wa) for our final 2024 meeting and annual harvest dinner.  this time is set aside to talk about how great our garden looked, and produced, and maybe fudge the details just a tad.

we can learn from each other what worked out there, and what did not, and maybe we can be better gardeners as a result, next year.

club members are asked to bring some food-thing from their garden, and visitors (and well-meaning club members) are asked to bring something from their favorite market delicatessen.  the club will provide ham and chicken, and if the roadside kills look palatable, maybe something exotic, LOL.

if you are the caretaker of a highly-sought-after club garden tour gnome, please bring the little guy along - they hold a conclave while we dine.  

see you then, jim mcginty

509-292-0326

September meeting and zucchini fest!

this coming tuesday, the 10th of september, at 7 p.m., we will hold our regular monthly meeting AND our first annual (?) zucchini festival.  be sure to check in the back, and under all those zuke leaves and vines - there is probably a monster green tubular veggie just waiting for you to clean, dress or decorate, or maybe even cook into something only mildly poisonous.  

categories:  biggest/heaviest, ugliest, "cook-a-zuke", and best decorated/dressed (two contestant age levels:  4-14, 15+).

zukes must have been grown by the contestant(s), and you gotta be at the grange by 7 p.m.

we have volunteer judges (incorruptible, stalwart, and keen of eye) ready to evaluate each entry.  prizes ($25 gift certificates for northwest seed and pet) will be awarded after all judgement is complete.  

club members are asked to bring along their favorite snack food (could be zucchini-based?), and/or non-alcoholic beverages for the club members, the mildly-amused general public, and our squash-deluded neighbors.

this event is free and open to the public, and yes, you must remove all your zucchini remains from the grange at the end of the meeting!

thanks, jim mcginty

509-292-0326

Home orchard class

quick note:  the pend oreille county master gardeners are offering a class on establishing a home orchard, on thursday, 12 september 2024, starting at 6:30 p.m. in the CREATE Arts Center (located at 900 4th Street, Newport).  the class will cover orchard planning, tree purchasing, planting procedures, maintenance, harvesting, and storage.  pest control and pruning will also be covered.  the class costs $5 per person, and you can register for the class by calling the pend oreille county extension office at 509-447-2401.

thanks, jim mcginty

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

We’re in the garden home stretch now folks, with approaching cooler weather, and possibly a frost or two.  What to do:  build a giant (expensive!) greenhouse covering your entire garden and orchard, or maybe cover the cold-sensitive plants with floating row cover (protects the crops down to + 26 degrees Fahrenheit – let’s see, for all you metric maniacs, that converts to, um, - 4060 degrees Centenigrate, or maybe it’s Celsonious?), or even cover the poor dears with sheets or curtains (gotta be careful with water-wicking fabric like cotton, which will crush delicate plants).  Could also try winding a string of old-fashioned Christmas tree lights (not the newer LED versions which don’t give off much heat) around and through the row crops (yes, you DO have to plug in the lights, but you can use a timer, and think how COOL your garden will look at night to your neighbors, and the folks on the International Space Station!).  Electric heat mats placed at the plant’s base’s might help, with a protective bubble-pack wrap around the plants?  Typically, we have a snap frost or two late in September, then warmer weather for a while, just to lull us back into inaction, then…WHAM!

Here at Rancho McGinty, the blueberry plants are just about finished with their annual tasty production, while the squash raised bed/trellis is loaded with huge spaghetti squash, butternut squash, and (new to us this year) “Festival Acorn” squash.  The “Festival Acorn” squash is bright orange, with green tops and bottoms, and covered in lots of colorful red and green spots – looks like confetti.  My gardening partner Pat

and I supposed the “Festival Acorn” squash plants would produce a handful of “personal”-sized fruit, but no, the plants produced a LOT of fruit in big clusters around the main stem – looks like a bunch of huge, orange grapes, LOL! 

On the front deck, the “Earth Box” garden is still producing lots of salad makings:  lettuce, spinach, white (almost pink!) tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.  Still some Summer heat out there, so we are enjoying our fresh salads.

In the orchard, the few apple trees that are bearing fruit have sagging branches, so I may have to prop up those productive limbs with some salvaged-for-the-purpose “Y”-shaped branches – last year, our very productive “Greensleeves” apple tree carried enough fruit to crack off a branch, which stripped off some of the trunk’s protective bark layer.  Sigh.

Out in the garden, it’s almost time to plant garlic:  now is the time to improve the garlic patch soil with manure (I prefer aged chicken poo) or fertilizer (a commercial 10-10-10), a healthy layer of fallen tree leaves and/or weed/seed-free straw (is there such a thing, LOL?), woodstove ashes, and maybe some fish meal or bone meal, if you are organically growing food.  I’ll be planting garlic cloves in (probably) late September, or early October.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On 10 September, our local gardening club will hold our first annual Zucchini Festival, at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange and Community Center (located at 7 Camden Road, Elk, WA) .  This will be a family-friendly, fun, and vegetable-oriented evening, with competitions for Zucchini-aficionados in the following categories:  biggest/heaviest zuke, ugliest zuke, “Cook-a-Zuke” (best food dish made from Zukes), and best decorated/dressed Zuke (two entry levels: ages 4-14, and ages 15+).

Each entered zuke must have been grown by the contestants, and all entries must be submitted by 7 P.M. in Camden Grange and Community Center.  

Our event is free to the public, and we hope you gardeners find your “dream” zuke lurking under all that foliage, just waiting to be improved with your favorite zuke recipe, or maybe carved into a stylish rose, or even dressed with a “Barbie-doll” wardrobe.

And on that fashionably-dressed squash note, I’m off to review my collection of “Mister Potato Head” decorations and body parts – hmmm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden club want ads

bruce and sandy cunningham have LOTS of free sawdust and sawshavings to load into your truck and/or trailer.  you can contact them at SAndyirene@yahoo.com

please note that we will be leaving earlier than our normal time for the last summer garden tour on 13 august:  6:30 p.m. departure time, due to the longer drive to kamori's home and garden.  kamori recommends we bring drinks, and bug spray - sounds more like a field trip, than a garden tour, LOL.

also, remember our first annual zucchini festival, to be held in september:  we'll have zuke competition categories (most stylishly dressed, boat construction, race cars, movie star models, etc.), cooking and baking competitions, and more.  club member rachael wallin offered to help with the festival, though she (wisely) grows NO zucchini herself, so let us know what you have in mind.  good reason to leave those monster-sized zukes in place, rather than feed them to the chickens!

thanks, jim mcginty

509-292-0326

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

This Summer’s heat is upon us, and our gardens will definitely appreciate our watering, feeding, and harvesting efforts (well, maybe not the “harvesting” part, so much – I don’t know if the blueberry plants appreciate us munching on their progeny, LOL).  

Here at Rancho McGinty, the garlic harvest is almost finished, and the bulbs look great, with nary a split outer skin or gopher bite.  Growing the bulbs through heavy weed fabric really (!) means limited competition from weeds, and therefore the bulbs are seriously large.

The aforementioned blueberries are almost ready to harvest, though quite a few of them have fallen victims to the “I’m just checking to see if it’s time to pick blueberries!” scheme.  Blueberry milkshakes are on the horizon!

Long-time wife and fellow gardener Pat and I have been eating salads from our “Earth Box” gardens on the front deck:  “Igloo” lettuce, “Bloomsdale Longstanding” spinach, and “Wayahead”slicer tomatoes – with (wait for it!) Kraft brand “Catalina” salad dressing – it’s an ‘80’s thing.

Out in the main garden, the key, now, is adequate watering and moisture preservation:  early morning (on a timer!), deep, infrequent watering, and thick mulch are the answers.  I prefer to use weep hose and drip irrigation – no overhead, wasteful “Rainbird”-type sprayers in this heat.

In this heat, some of the leafy greens may appreciate some shade cloth to reduce sunscald and heat stress:  commercial (30-50% dark) shade cloth can block direct sunlight damage, and keep your green leaves from bleaching (and tasting nasty).  A good, inexpensive alternative to commercial shade cloth are ordinary, dark sheer curtains – check the thrift stores!

And if you are ready to seed plants for an Autumn harvest, now is the time to seed leaf lettuce, peas, chard, and spinach – you may need to replenish the soil fertility, but there is still time until first frost.

Out in the orchard, the aphids are finally gone (for now), due primarily to three, weekly sprayings of Neem oil – the new leaves look lush and green.  It’s time to thin the fruit, which is always a heartbreaker for dedicated fruit tree folks:  we waited all Winter and Spring for the blossoms, and then the fruit, and now we are supposed to discard ANY baby fruit that are too close to each other??!!  Separate them, or the poor dears will bang into each other in the wind, and then bruise, and spoil – NOT our goal.

While you are being mean to the baby fruit, look for long, heavily-populated branches which may need some support as the remaining (sigh) fruit gain in size and weight – I use repurposed forked branches.

GARDENING CALENDAR:

On the 8^th of August, those fans of fantastic flora, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on dividing perennials, instructed by He Who Knows Flowering Bulbs Like No Other, Master Gardener Steve Nokes.  If you want to know (more!) about correctly dividing gladiolas, tulips, daffodils, etc., you will want to attend this class at 6:30 P.M. in the C.R.E.A.T.E. place, located at 900 West Fourth Street, Newport.  You can call the W.S.U. Extension Office at 509-447-2401 to register for the class, and ask for more details.

On the 13^th of August, our local gardening club will offer the final garden tour for Summer 2024, with a visit to the garden of one of our favorite guest speakers.  We will see how to use strategic garden planning for raised bed gardens, herb wheels, vineyards, and fruit tree orchards – all in a forested setting, with a solar and wind-powered lifestyle.  You will not want to miss this opportunity.  We will be leaving Camden Grange and Community Center (located at 7 Camden Road, Elk, WA) at 6:30 P.M., as the tour location is about 45 minutes away, up Le Clerc Road, on the other side of the Pend Oreille River.  

Speaking of our local gardening club, our first annual Zucchini Festival is coming up in September:  competition categories include largest Zuke (based on length, width, and weight), Zuke animal forms, most stylishly-dressed Zuke, Zukes fashioned into boats (do NOT need to float, LOL), and other categories as well.  So encourage your squash, and plan to squash all other challengers in the categories of your choice.  Finally, a good use for all those “baseball bat”-sized zukes hiding in the undergrowth!  More Festival details at our next meeting on 13 August.

Be careful in the heat out there:  wide-brimmed hats, long sleeves, sun block, bug spray, and lots of refreshing liquids.

 

 

 

 

July garden tour confirmed!

we are back on for a garden tour tomorrow evening, 09 july, 7:00 p.m. departure time from camden grange (located at 7 camden road, elk, wa).  we will be checking out and learning from a large family garden located in spring valley, so a 30 minute trip, one way.  lots of raised beds, green houses, drip irrigation (really important to learn this topic this summer!), and more.  

our weather will be hot, so please appropriately dress, and hydrate.  

our garden club freebie table will be set up in the grange, with donated gardening-related stuff to take home - if you have something (no, not all those decade-old "national geographic" magazines, LOL!), to donate, please bring it/them along.

see you tomorrow evening, jim.

509-292-0326