July garden tour

After a dust-filled, bumpy detour around the under-construction Elk bridge, all 28 of us rambled through the gardens of Kathy and Ed Reedy on the delightful evening of 9 July.  We saw a very productive veggie garden, wonderfully-landscaped ponds and waterfalls, and well-kept lawns all around us.  Hosts Kathy and Ed received their highly coveted Garden Club traditional Garden Gnome with appropriate game faces ("what the heck is this??!!"), and turned us loose to browse, admire, and pummel them with questions.

One of the questions was "where did the veggie garden weed block fabric come from?".  Kathy said she bought the commercial grade fabric from Bark Boys in north Spokane (15402 North Highway 2, Mead - phone 509-465-1819), and so I inquired:  a 36" by 50' roll of black woven (green stripe) weed block costs $18, and both Pat and I agree that would be money well-spent.  Kathy said she just rolls up the fabric at the end of each garden season, and that the fabric lasts for at least 10 years of use - she did tell me to remember to place the fabric on the dirt, felt side down.

One last amazing garden club tour in August; in September, we'll have a hands-on, indoor (?) class on making those concrete, giant leaf-shaped garden decorations or cupped planters, courtesy of club member Marlene Routt.

See you in August!

Jim

Garden club July tour warning notice

We will gather at Camden Grange on the evening of 9 July 2019, and depart promptly at 7 p.m. for a tour of the gardens located behind the home of Kathy and Ed Reedy, owner/operators of Reedy's Custom Meats, near beautiful downtown Elk.  

Please do not arrive early for a personalized tour, and also please remember that the Elk bridge is still ungoing major construction.  Accordingly, our club convoy will make a number of detours from the grange to Reedy's home.  If you want to wait for the convoy, you could park near the Backwoods Store in Elk (on the east side of the bridge), and zoom in behind us.

See you at the grange, 

Jim

June tour: wobblers and human-powered cultivator

On the 11th of June, 34 club members descended on "Montague Heritage Farms" in Elk, for our June garden tour.  Ed and Lisa Montague and their family are in the process of changing their large family garden into a retirement income farm, complete with hoop houses, salad mix sales, heritage chickens (red eggs, green eggs, pink eggs), a huge walk-in cooler, and lots of green things growing in long rows.

Lisa (Ed was away at gainful employment during our noisy visit - smart man!) pointed out their use of "Wobblers" to water their long rows of healthy plants - Wobblers are sprayers on PVC pipe uprights, that make efficient use of limited water.  

Wobblers are available from Amazon.com (of course), Dripdepot.com, and from Farmtek.com.
Also of interest was the family's use of a human-powered rotary cultivator inside the raised beds, that caught the eye of more than one envious gardener:  the green and yellow (NOT a "John Deere" product!) cultivator is available from "Lehman's" and "Cottage Craft Works."

Please note that members must be present during meetings and tours in order to receive any goodies from drawings or give aways - your buddy may only take home his or her loot.

We'll be touring in both July and August, so stay tuned.

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Here in the garden at Rancho McGinty, the mantra of the day is “So far, so good,”meaning no bad news, and some good news.  Examples abound:  the garlic is almost waist high, and the scapes (the pig-tail curly things at the top of the garlic stalks are the plant’s seed pods) are ready to harvest, batter coat, and fry, or maybe we’ll chop them into the salad instead of using green onions.  We harvested, lightly steamed, and ate the first of the broccoli florets – covering the plants with floating row cover means that we have no aphids or other creepies hiding in the edibles, so that makes for an efficient dinner, as I don’t like to take a lot of time to closely examine my food for evidence of insect bodies and their daily wastes (ewww!).  The potato plants are looking really good, with dark green leaves, and beautiful flowers in blue, white, red, and yellow:  almost time to dig up some baby red spuds for a boil up with butter, salt and pepper, and maybe some chives.

The cabbage, both red and white varieties, are heading up, with big green leaves, and (due to a covering of the aforementioned floating row cover) no aphids or cabbage loopers in sight.  The corn (sigh) is only about 10 inches high, so despite the old adage of “knee high by the Fourth of July,” our corn crop is still iffy – we will shortly see.

Our kale plants (both red and curly types) are also ready to harvest, so we’ll be cooking up a batch with bacon, onions, and garlic.  Speaking of onions, the plants currently growing through the experimental black plastic polyfilm mulch are four times the size of the same onions growing alongside in the garden soil – may be the heat sink effect, or may be the lack of weed competition, but something is definitely efficient with the black mulch.

Out in the orchard, now is the time to continue the process of removing water sprouts or suckers, and thinning the remaining fruit to 6 inches apart or so. Wood stove ashes scattered around the drip line of the trees will help produce more and better fruit – the trees love the added potash (potassium ash).

In the garden, now is the time to mound up dirt or barnyard litter around the potato plants, to encourage more and better spuds – if you are growing early potatoes, you will want to reduce watering mid to late July as the plants keel over, and signal that the harvest is ready.

If you plan to continue the garden with late summer plantings of crops that can stand a few mild (early?) frosts (i.e., kale, chard, spinach, beets, radishes, broccoli, carrots), you will want to start the seeds of short-season (60 days or less?) varieties mid-July, so you can transplant in mid-August.

June-bearing strawberry plants will benefit from fertilizing now, while ever-bearing plants would appreciate a fertilizer boost mid-season (mid-July?) – aged cow poo, scattered rabbit poo, comfrey leaf or manure tea will all help.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On July 9^th, our local garden club will be touring a neighboring garden of yet another unsuspecting family:  this month we will check out a large, developed garden featuring raised beds, drip irrigation, grow tunnels, compost bins, and much more.  We will promptly depart from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a short drive, but possibly avoiding the still-under-renovation Elk bridge.  As always, the public is invited to attend our tours, and you can check for more details on this and other club events on our Facebook group page, or here, our club’s on-line blog site.

On July 11^th, those persistent providers of plant pronouncements, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on how you can best harvest vegetables and seeds.  The class will run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension Office, located at 227 South Garden Avenue, Newport, and you may register for the class, or ask pertinent (or impertinent!) questions by calling 509-447-2401.

On the 18th of July, our sister organization, the Backyard Beekeepers, will hold their

monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Deer Park Senior Center - veteran and wanna-be beekeepers will benefit from the local information on raising jungle-heat loving bees in a region where Winter temperatures drop (with some regularity!) below zero Fahrenheit. 

That’s it for this month – so far, so good.