Gardening starts NOW! Really!

Longer, sunnier days in early February, but we still saw a low temperature last night (Jan. 31) of +9 degrees Fahrenheit - a tad cold to be transplanting tomatoe and pepper plants into the open garden.  

So, instead my gardening partner Pat and I are trying something new (indoors) in the way of seed starting (we just gotta get our hands dirty - it's a character flaw!). The technique is called wintersown seeds, and consists of sowing seeds into protective, vented (recycled, in our case) containers, and placing them outdoors (yes, into the snow and ice!) to foster a naturally-timed germination of cool weather veggie seeds (broccoli, spinach, rutabagas, etc.), and flower seeds  which need to be pre-chilled before transplanting.

Basically, we recycled a plastic restaurant or bakery clamshell container, melted slots (using an old wood burning tool or soldering iron, thrift store find at $3) in the clear top for ventilation and water, and melted slots in the black bottom for drainage, filled it with seed-starting soil mix, planted the seeds, assembled the clamshell, and placed it outside in the (brrrrr!) sunshine and under a layer of ice/snow - and we also remembered to LABEL the containers with plant name and variety, and the date we started.  We may have forgotten to do this last part in the past – we call this practice "creative gardening."

You can use your internet access to visit the wintersown website for more details and lots of success stories. We'll let you know how the technique works (good or bad) later, probably in March (?). 

GARDENING CALENDAR

On the 9th of February, the prodigious plant people from the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners will offer a class titled "Ready, Set, Garden," which will focus on preparing your garden for spring planting, seed selection, seed-starting timelines, and more. Taught by local darned-good gardener, Dr. Clayton Kersting, the class runs from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Extension Office (227 S. Garden Ave., Newport), and costs $5 for community members, although if you bring along a friend, their cost is only $2, so carpool with your neighborhood gardening friends, and save! You can call the Extension Office for more details or to register for the class at 509-447-2401.

On the 15th of February, I'll teach a class titled "New Garden, Old Garden," where we will discuss garden layout and design, soil testing, improvements and amendments, and planning your vegetable triumph.  Class will run from 6-8 p.m. at the Newport College Center (1204 W. 5th, Newport), and will cost $14.  You can register for the class online at www.sccel.spokane.edu/Act2, or you can call 800-845-3324.

And on the 22nd of February, I'll teach a class on seed starting, where we will talk about (and demonstrate) how make and use your own potting soil, start baby veggie greens, and other cost-saving garden ideas. The class will cost $14, and will run from 6-8 p.m. at the Newport College Center - all the contact/registration information is the same for this class as the above class.

Finally, for those of you who whine/grouse/complain that "I just can't garden with all this snow and cold temperatures, and I'm going stir-crazy!" take a look at the windowsill salad garden grown by Master Gardener Joyce Weir - fresh salad greens in February - it can be done, but you gotta get out of that recliner!

Jim

We will miss him

After a long battle with cancer, club member Leroy Hargrave passed away this month. Leroy was a spark of light during our monthly meetings and garden tours, and EVERYONE loved his homemade salsa, his quick wit, and his slow smile. Carolyn Hargrave intends to return to our area of the world in April, to be with family, and to continue gardening.

Cards and letters may be sent to Carolyn at P.O. Box 100, Elk, WA  99009 – the post office will forward her mail.

Jim

Gardening season begins NOW with classes, gatherings

It's time to get out of the house (or cabin), and do some fun stuff, before we all go stir-crazy!

On the 19th of January, our local bee-raising community will gather at the Deer Park Senior Center (located in the lower level of the Deer Park City Hall) at 6:30 p.m. for the first 2017 meeting of the Backyard Bee Keepers.  The focus of the meeting will be(e) "Cooking with Honey," which sounds like a sweet class topic, to me. Non-beekeepers are always welcome.

On the 21st of January, a LOT of us will attend the first 2017 bingo night at Inland Grange (37411 N. Conklin Road, Elk), at 6:30 p.m. Competitiveness, pizza, caffeinated softdrinks, and a lot of laughter – it's all good.

On the 28th of January, the LDS church on Highway 2, across from the Ram restaurant, will hold a Self Reliance seminar starting at 10 a.m., with classes on gardening, food preservation, heating with wood, and more.   

Also on the 28th of January, just after the Self Reliance seminar, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners will offer a series of gardening classes and demonstrations (not the picket signs and loud ranting kind of demonstration!) on winter indoor salad growing, spring garden preparations, seed starting, and related topics. The event runs from 1-3 p.m., at the CREATE place, 900 W. 4th Street, Newport, and you can call the Master Gardeners at the County Extension office for details, at 509-447-2401.

Garden club member Barbara Midtbo recommends a class, "Gardening with Grafted Vegetables," taught by Salem, Oregon, Master Gardener Harry Olson at the 2nd of February meeting of The Inland Empire Gardeners. The meeting and class starts at 6:30 p.m., at Center Place, in Spokane Valley Mirabou Park (2426 N. Discovery Place, Spokane Valley).

I hope you will take advantage of some (or all!) of these opportunities to have fun, and maybe learn something as well – oh, and maybe get out of the house.

jim

Early winter notes

Mid-December 2016, and the coldest night we have seen so far was a chilly -8 degrees Fahrenheit - today, the sunny daytime temperature is hovering around 22 degrees.  Our daily activities include refilling woodstoves, baking cookies, and catching up on correspondence, movies, and dinners with friends and neighbors. We all had a busy summer, and now, it's time to rest, recharge, and plan for the 2017 Best Ever Garden!  

Well, maybe we'll check out the pile of seed catalogs in January: on every catalog page each plant and veggie is so beautifully photographed and the plant descriptions are just so over the top, flowery, and embellished – and the new varieties sound so delicious, productive, and easy to grow! We gardeners are such suckers...and we love it, and apparently we never learn 😁.

Pat and I purposely left some carrots, kale, broccoli, and chard plants to overwinter in the garden - we want to see if the plants will survive with an insulating cover of snow, into next spring.  

Finally, those playful plant plot plowers, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County, are looking for a fresh crop of gardeners willing to join them. Master Gardeners help our community by sharing, showing, and teaching valuable lessons in growing food for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors and friends.  If you are interested in becoming a Master Gardener, you can call the Pend Oreille County/Washington State University Extension Office in Newport at 509-447-6453 – ask for Dixie Chichester.

That's it for this year - stay warm, and out of the ditch.

Jim

'Shroomers – can you identify these?

We have received SO MUCH rain lately (remember when we were whining about the drought back in August?) that I'm starting to feel like a Seattle-based mushroom – THEN we spotted all the mushrooms/toadstools growing out in our water-soaked yard! 

Does anyone have clue what we have growing here? Pat and I are not mushroom-ologists, and though we do enjoy sautéed mushrooms, we would never just eat something that kinda resembles the brown mushrooms one may buy in the grocery stores. 

Maybe I should just invite some (unsuspecting) garden club members over for a mushroom cook-off: "Here, try a bite of this, you'll like it!"

Or maybe not...

jim

Gardeners share the bounty at 2016 Harvest Dinner

On the evening of the 11th of October, our local garden club held its final meeting and annual Harvest Dinner at Camden Grange. I counted 47 people in attendance, from 2-year-olds to many-year-olds, and a LOT of families – that was really good to see. We ate delicious ham, chicken, rice, veggies, dinner rolls, and so much dessert! 

Our garden club gnomes held their annual Gnome Conclave (you can see some of them above, along the back wall), and paid club members received their really cool club tee-shirts. 

We'll meet again in March 2017, with indoor classes for the first few months (while it's still dark and brisk outside), and then we'll visit local gardens for the rest of the summer. See you then!

jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Time to wrap up the gardening season, after several hard frosts under our belts, and a desire on the part of many gardeners to end the joys (?) of weeding, watering, harvesting, and processing plants into edible/storeable food. Whew – hard work, but worth every minute, every sore muscle – the supermarkets will never sell a tomatoe that tastes as good as the one you ripened on the vine in your garden.

Here at Rancho McGinty, my gardening partner Pat and I just harvested the last of the potatoes (“Viking Purple”, “German Butterball”, “Red La Soda”, “Ida-Red”, and “Red Gold”) – we have several hundred pounds of spuds in storage, with visions of mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, french fries, and more – must be our German and Irish genes!

Our onion crop was amazing, with hardball-to-softball-sized red, white, and yellow onions – the scallions, however, were a complete loss. Our cabbages were a mixed bag of good news, bad news – I suspect the long, dry, hot summer wasn’t all that good for a crop that likes cool, wet weather. Speaking of cool, wet weather crops, the Brussels sprouts are still hanging in there, with one-inch-diameter sprouts trying their best to grow bigger, while the other cool-weather crops, such as kale, chard, lettuce, and carrots, taste really good after a couple of frosts.

2016 tomato report from Pat: successful varieties for this year included “Silvery Fir Tree,” “Scotia,” and “Sungold.” The paste tomato “Pompeii Roma” will be replaced in 2017 by “Health Kick” and/or “Amish Paste.” We’re officially giving up on trying to grow “Brandywine” and “Oregon Spring” tomatoes – we have better things to grow in our hard-won soil.  This year, our garden club blogmeister Su grew and traded some dandy Russian-origin, cool-weather-resistant tomatoes to our club members: tomato variety “Balkanoye” will replace “Megabite,” and we’ll add varieties “Protribny Rozmir” and “Cosmonaut Volkov” to our favorites list – we might not be able to pronounce their names, but they taste great, and grow really well in our challenging weather – we’re kinda hoping that Su will grow these varieties for 2017 planting!

If you have not already done so, now is the time to plant your garlic cloves, six inches apart, with two inches of dirt on top of the pointy end of the cloves, and in rows about eighteen inches apart. I like to mulch the garlic with about six inches of maple leaves or pine needles – the mulch helps protect the cloves from winter’s frost heaves, and retains soil moisture.

Everywhere else in the garden, I’m adding and rototilling under gobs of composted cow and horse manure (thank you, Steve and Jo!), leaves, straw, chicken poo, and pine needles to bring the soil fertility and texture up to snuff for spring 2017 planting.  

When our garden chores are finally finished (late October or early November?), we’ll drain, coil, and store the hoses, drip irrigation systems, and weep hose – this will be a great time to check/inventory our garden hose fittings (sprayers, wands, rubber washers, etc.), so we can buy replacements over the winter. 

While you are storing your very expensive garden tools away from snow and rain, be sure to check wooden and fiberglass handles for wear and tear, and I’ll just bet every one of your cutting tools (from shovels to shears) needs to be sharpened and oiled– you wanted something to do in January anyway, right?

Speaking of buying garden stuff, we should all start seeing those colorful garden seed and equipment catalogs showing up in our mailboxes, any time now: November and December are great months to review what you want to grow next year, and then buy those seeds early! Once again, this year saw a LOT of garden seed catalog descriptions with the dreaded “not available – seed crop failure,”or “sorry – out of stock” notations – buy those seeds early!

GARDEN CALENDAR

On the fifth of October, I’ll be teaching a Backyard Chickens class at the Newport College Center (1204 W. Fifth St., Newport) from 6-8 p.m. – we’ll talk about the best ways to raise delicious and/or entertaining chickens right there in your own backyard – you know you want their poo for your garden and compost bin! You can call the center at 800-845-3324 for additional information or to register, or go on-line to register at www.sccel.spokane.edu/ACT2.  

On the eleventh of October, our local garden club will hold our annual Harvest Dinner, and the club’s last meeting for 2016, at 7 p.m. in Camden Grange. Club members are famous for bringing side dishes and desserts made from their own garden-fresh ingredients. We’ll talk about the challenges/rewards of gardening (or NOT gardening J !), and we’ll discuss what we want to accomplish in our 2017 gardens.

You can stay updated on our club’s activities by visiting this website.

On the thirteenth of October, those greenery growing gurus, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners, will offer a class on “Preparing Your Garden for Winter,” from 6-8:30 p.m. at the County Extension Office (227 S. Garden Ave., Newport). You will learn how best to wrap up your gardening efforts for this year, and learn what you can do now to prepare your garden for a spectacularly successful gardening season next year. You can call the office at 509-447-2401 for more information, or to register for the class.

That’s it for this gardening season – I’ll return in March 2017 with another eight months and eight columns of gardening mis-advice and language misnomers.  See (?) you then.