Weeding Between the Lines

by Jim McGinty

“Bamboozled by the Weather!” should be the headline for this column: out in the garden at Rancho McGinty, we don’t know if we can plant out the tomatoes (frost every night for the last two weeks), water the garlic (the weather forecaster/truth-stretcher has promised rain nearly every week), or re-plant the onions (the first wave of onion sets look pretty pathetic three weeks after planting).  Is it Winter, Spring, or Summer?  We’ll know by September…

The cool weather seedlings (kale, chard, cabbage, bok choi, etc.) look pretty healthy in their new plastic-film cold frame (Bi-Mart/Deer Park, $25 – good deal, per the wifely seed supervisor, Pat), and the fruit trees are showing new leaves and/or fruit blossoms.  Even the recently grafted heirloom apple trees (thank you Jane and Su!) are budding above the graft union – more baby apple tree goodness.

If you have been holding off planting your new fruit trees, now is an excellent time to finish that chore:  I like to dig an over-sized hole for the root ball, throw in some compost and an equal amount of aged chicken house scrapings (a heady, piquant blending of poo, dirt, and wood shavings), and place the root ball at about the same height as it was in the plastic pot (a little lower is better than a little higher).  Backfill with local dirt, and water the tree in until all the bubbles stop – make sure to provide an inch of water to the tree every week for at least the Summer.  Many authorities tell new fruit tree owners to prune back the baby tree by up to half it’s shipping height, to encourage root production, but I’ve had amazing success with just letting the fruit tree develop on its own – I do prune out broken or crossing branches, but other than that, I figure the tree knows better than me.  At Rancho McGinty, we have to protect every bit of possible food (garden crops, orchard trees, berry patch, etc.) from the predations of the foul (yet delicious!) white-tailed deer:  I usually surround new trees with a cylinder of two-by-four inch welded wire fencing, three feet in diameter, and five feet high, with an ancillary six foot tee-post zip-tied to the cylinder.  Feel free to remove the protective cylinder when the tree dies in twenty-five years, or when you just want to watch the tranquil, charming deer devour your food and your tree – preferably through a four-power scope.

For those of you with flowering forsythia, now is the time (post-yellowness) to prune your bushes, and now is also the time to prune out all the dead, brown, icky canes in your raspberry rows.

One can also take time to plant all those perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb, and horseradish, and it’s time to push our luck and plant seed for those other cool weather crops (peas, carrots, beet, spinach, cabbage, potatoes, radishes, parsnips, and onions).  In the strawberry bed, you can pull off all the over-Winter mulch, so the penetrating rays of the life-giving Sun can warm those new leaves and runners – just remember to hold off fertilizing the plants, unless your goal is good-looking strawberry leaves.  June-bearing strawberries are most efficiently fertilized after the harvest, and ever-bearing varieties should be fertilized half-way through the season.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On the 6th of May, I’ll be teaching a class on backyard composting, from 6 – 8 PM, at the Newport College Center (1204 W. 5th St., Newport).  We’ll learn the hows, the whys, and the whens of successful Brown Gold production:  you can call for further details or to pre-register for the class at 509-447-3835.

On the 9th of May, our local gardening club will be selling plants and garden goodies at the annual Garden Expo, held at Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane), from 9 AM to 5 PM.  The event brings together over two hundred garden plant and product vendors, with free gardening classes and demonstrations all day.  The Expo is free, though I recommend you wear comfortable shoes, and bring a purchases-transport (wheelbarrow, red wagon, donkey, etc.) - oh, and bring money.

On the 12th of May, our local garden club members will still be recovering from our hugely successful Expo sales extravaganza, and at our monthly meeting, we will have a knowledgeable guest speaker on the subject of early 1900’s apple orchards and homestead apple trees.  In our community, we have a LOT of small, abandoned apple tree orchards, usually the only indication of a small, abandoned farmstead from long ago.  We will meet in Camden Grange at 7 PM, and we will snack, drink (non-alcoholic, as far as you know), and be merry.  See you there.

On the 20th of May, I will be teaching a class on the Foundations of the Veggie Garden at the Newport College Center from 6 – 8 PM:  new and experienced gardeners will learn how to plan, start, and improve their gardens, and how to curb all those impulses toward squash concession.

Remember to call the College Center for pre-registration at 509-447-3835.

That’s it for this month (and that’s a lot!).  See you out in the garden.

Jim writes a monthly gardening column for the Elk Sentinel, and is a master gardener and president and founder of Elk-Camden Garden Keepers. He has a dog named Buster and a really smart wife, Pat.

First asparagus!

Last year we had to ignore the fat purple-green spears of asparagus, as the plants were just a year old and needed to establish themselves before we were allowed to eat any. But this year we can have some! We had not-quite-enough, steamed, drizzled with lemon juice and butter, and they were delicious.

I was going to take a picture, but I couldn't wait.

What's going on in your garden?

Su

Water ponderings

We talked about watering systems for the garden last night at our meeting – and maybe at every meeting. The club has held classes about setting up drip irrigation systems. I have had drip systems myself, and still have a bunch of (expensive!) parts. The trouble with drip irrigation systems is a) all those little emitters and sprayers and lines are costly, b) putting together a system is fiddly, what with poking holes in lines and inserting bits and bobs, and some of us are impatient, and c) nearly all of us are on well water, which means low pressure and mineralized water that will clog tiny passages in emitters and sprinklers. So, maybe like you, I end up dragging hoses around my big garden, and cussing.

But there are a couple of options that I'm hoping to try this year to improve my watering, and cut down the cussing before the county air quality people notice the blue cloud over Elk and label my town "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

You can buy, for about $20, a filter that screws right on your garden hose and will "remove or reduce" calcium and iron particles that clog soaker hoses and drip lines. Has anybody tried one? They are supposed to last only about a season, but I think $20 a year might be a good investment. 

There are a couple of brands, and here are links for them. 

Mr. Drip

Mr. Soaker Hose

The Utah State University Extension Office has put together a plan for a DIY PVC watering system that is being used by lots of Type-A gardeners (smart, super-organized maybe even anal-retentive engineering types – you know who you are!) around the country. The system has been adapted for all kinds of operations, from market gardens to raised beds, is completely customizable to each garden, and is significantly less expensive than commercial drip systems. (Leave it to an extension office to make all the information available free to everyone, instead of patenting their ideas and selling kits for a bajillion dollars. Thank you, good people!)

The USU plan includes valves for control by zone or bed.

Original DIY PVC plans 

The problems I foresee with the DIY PVC are a) possible leaching of chemicals from the plastic (though PVC is approved for drinking water and is used from my pump house all through my house and to the hose bibs, it's hardly organic), b) while it is cheaper, it still ain't free, and c) while all the parts are bigger than drip bits, there is still some significant fiddling. On the plus side, I could use PVC for the main lines and then switch to soaker hoses and drip equipment in the beds. Also on the plus side, the PVC parts are not glued, and can be disassembled and put away at the end of each season, and reassembled differently next season.

You can read more about different adaptations of the system at these links – or just search "DIY PVC garden watering" on the web.
Modern Homemaker’s system

PVC for tomatoes

PVC nerd site (Yes, there are people who use PVC for everything. You didn't know?)

My plan is to hook up to the house spigot above the garden, cross the sidewalk somehow (we'll think about that later), then set up a main line down the slope through the middle of the garden. The main line will be three-quarter-inch PVC, interrupted with three-quarter-to-half-inch Ts leading to half-inch ball valves ($2.64 at Home Depot) at each bed. The ball valves allow precise control of the water to the half-inch line(s) running down each bed. (I imagine a 1960s model tripping down the center path of my lush, perfect garden in her high heels and making sweeping Vanna White gestures along the cabbage bed, then, with a flourish, opening the valve, causing sparkling water to drool on the happy green plants. She smiles. Her perfect teeth sparkle.)

 Imagining TV commercials is so much easier than doing the work. Sigh. 

PVC will degrade in sunlight over time, so I guess I could spray paint it brown, which would also make it less ugly, or just mound mulch over it. Or buy the new-fangled sun-resistant PVC, if it isn't too expensive.

Anyway, here's one more way to get water onto the garden. I've got the project on my list, just under the "put up fencing to create goat moat around the garden to repel deer." If that doesn't work, I'll have to get uglier goats.

Fellow gardeners, how do you water your gardens? And repel deer?


Su: 8 rocky acres, 2-year-old garden, a few tiny fruit trees and raspberries, small greenhouse made from 3 recycled patio doors; 2 Shetland sheep, 2 cashmere goats, 6 angora rabbits, 6 dogs.

Fodder talk at the April 14 meeting

We will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday (the 14th of April) at Camden Grange, for an evening of fun and fodder. Mary Lee and Jane will have a presentation on growing grains into inexpensive green sprouts and grass (!) for livestock (chickens, sheep, gerbils, and whatnot). Please be sure to bring along any treats and drinks you may wish to share, and as always, feel free to bring your unwanted seeds and gardening-related catalogs for the give-away table (our U.S. mailbox is usually crammed with colorful brochures this time of year - the pictured plants look SO amazing on all the pages - it's like the seed companies are our best friends, EVER!).

Also please remember to continue raising plants for the club's booth at the Garden Expo on the 9th of May - we'll want to have a lot of good-looking baby veggies and fruits to offer. This might be a good time to check that each plant or pot is labelled with at least a type, the variety, and hopefully a hint on how long until harvest.See you at the meeting - don't make us send around a club representative ("Big Luigi") to find you .