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.

June garden club garden tour warning

We will be touring our first garden of the 2019 gardening season on Tuesday, June 11.  We will assemble at Camden grange, and depart at 7 p.m. for a short 10-minute drive.  Lisa and Ed Montague have a large family garden, which they are converting to a you-pick and farmers' market operation for their retirement years.  Two large hoop houses, large garden, salad mix crops, chickens with roll out egg collection drawers, and much more.  Lisa and Ed have a well with a 2 gallon per minute capacity, so they have been researching and installing water saving gardening devices – a lot to learn at this garden tour.

See you there,

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Heavy rain today, with the promise of sunshine for the next week – sounds like the weeds and grass will be happy.  Here at Rancho McGinty, the recent cooler temperatures mean that the veggie seeds I planted two weeks ago probably rotted in the ground – veggies like soil temperatures around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and our soil thermometer currently reads a chilly 41 degrees – I’ll replant those seeds during our upcoming “heat wave.”  Looking good, so far though, are the red cabbage and green cabbage plants, the potatoes, the onions (more on this later), the chard and kale plants, and the garlic and asparagus – all cool weather crops.  

This year, I’m using black plastic polyfilm in which to grow most of our onions.  The strip is 24 inches wide, with 3-4 inch-diameter holes burned into the plastic, down the length of the garden.  Under the black plastic is a drip irrigation weep hose, and yes, I did remember to move the poly film strip off of the weep hose, BEFORE I burned the holes with our propane flame weeder – that was the fun part of the project.  I planted most of the 200-plus onion sets into the holes, one set per hole, and between the added soil heat resulting from the black surface, and the lack of competing weeds, the onions are far and away taller and greener than their cousins which were planted in the open garden, with a grass clippings mulch around them.  Stay tuned for additional onion updates.

In the orchard, our apple, pear, and cherry trees were covered in flowers this spring – if we can avoid a late frost, and if I can remember to adequately water the trees this summer, we should have a bumper crop of delicious fruit.  This is a good time to prune out all those unnecessary water sprouts or suckers in the trees, and I’ll watch for fruit to appear – I’ll want to thin the nickel-sized diameter babies to 6 inches or so apart (I don’t want the fruits banging into each other – bruises equal rotten spots).  

Starting next week, (when it’s probably safe from a late frost?), we should be able to transplant all those leggy warm weather veggie starts:  peppers, egg plant, tomatoes, pumpkins, and the livestock fodder squash.  I’m thinking I will also plant seeds for the hot weather crops as well:  sweet corn, dry beans and green beans, and cucumbers.  I plan to protect all those tender, touchy plants under agricultural row cover (Ree-May ®, or Agribon ®, available at Spokane’s Northwest Seed and Pet), just in case the we get nipped.

Speaking of tender, touchy things, please remember that our favorite flora fans, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County, offer a gardener’s answer clinic for garden-related questions on plant and insect identification, soil improvements and composting, and much more.  You can visit the clinic site at the WSU Extension Office (227-A South Garden Avenue, Newport) on Thursdays, from 4:30-6 p.m., or you can e-mail questions (and photos!) to pomastergardeners@outlook.com, or if you insist on old-school contacts, you can call them (on the telephone- gasp!) at 509-447-2401.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On the 11^th of June, our local gardening club will begin our summer tour season with a visit to a neighboring family garden, which is in the process of conversion to a small commercial garden (long-term retirement income thinking).  Lots to see here with home-built greenhouses, salad crops growing through black polyfilm mulch, and much more (“mulch” more?).  You can obtain more information on the tour by accessing our club’s website here, or by checking our Facebook group page.

On the 20^th of June, our sister organization, the Backyard Beekeepers, will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Deer Park Senior Center, for an evening of bee information and bee training.  If you want to raise bees in our non-jungle area of the world, you will want to talk with these folks before spending any of your precious time or money.

Outside, I can hear the quack grass and dandelion plants taking over my hard-won spaces in the garden, lawn, and orchard – they, however, can hear me attaching a new one pound propane tank to my flame weeder – vengeance is MINE!

Garden club meeting warning notice

We will be gathering at Camden Grange at 7 p.m., Tuesday (the 14th of May) for this month's meeting –next month I hope we can tour a prospective garden Pat and I recently located (yes, we troll and stalk potential garden tour sites wherever we go) in the Elk area. 

 

Tomorrow evening we will talk about what we want to grow this season, and discuss the possibilities of our "new normal" weather, allowing more or less diversity in our plantings (cacti vs rutabagas).  We will also have a short but brilliantly informative class on backyard composting, and we will snack and drink ourselves into a tizzy, and loudly comment on the absence of certain club members - don't be those club members!

Please remember to bring along some snacking materials, and any excess gardening seeds, plants, or related stuff - burlap sacks of fresh manure will not be allowed in the grange - jus' sayin.'

See you there,

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Spring is in the air:  warm, gentle breezes, an occasional rain drop, and  bright sunshine – weeds, greening lawns, robins, daffodils – it’s all good, especially after our recent mini-ice age.

Here at Rancho McGinty, the garlic stalks are 9 inches tall and bright green, the asparagus shoots are poking through their mulch covering, and the fruit tree buds are popping open with the promise of apples, pears, and cherries in the not-too-distant future.

Now that the garden areas and raised beds have received their spring addition of aged chicken poo and barnyard waste (an aromatic mixture of hay, straw, and manure and urine from our goat and sheep pets), seeding the garden with cool weather crops has officially begun.

So far we have dropped in seeds for radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, and giant sugar beets (“Mangelwurzels”, for our livestock).

Mid-May, we’ll plant seeds for the peas and beans, and probably (?) transplant at least SOME of the remaining cool weather crops:  kale, chard, cabbage, and broccoli – we’ll see how the outdoor temperatures ramp up, and we always plant in waves of transplants (“succession” planting), so that if we have a snap frost, we have immediate replacements ready to leap into the garden.

Planting potatoes and onions will be on the calendar somewhere around mid-May as well.  We plan on using a new-to-us potato planting method:  dig a shallow trench into the garden soil, set the seed potatoes (whole chicken-egg-sized seed potatoes or cut potatoe chunks with at least one “eye” showing) into the trench about 12 inches apart, such that the eye is above soil level, and backfill with dirt.  Cover the potato patch with 10 inches or so of straw (not seed-filled hay), add an inch or so of water once per week (keeping the mulch and potatoes moist is important), and stand back!  

We’ll keep you posted on how this turns out – hopefully better than my experiment last summer with the “Alaska Sweet Corn” ploy – sigh.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On Thursday, May 9, those greenery gratifiers, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners, will offer a class on growing berries and small fruit in the home garden.  Blackberry milkshakes, breakfast cereal with blueberries, strawberries and cream are all possible in our area of the gardening world – learn from the experts, and I’ll be there as well.  Class runs from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Extension Office (227 S. Garden Ave., Newport), and you can call for a seat reservation at 509-447-2401.

On Saturday, May 11, those same plant promulgators, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners, will offer a class on drip irrigation from 10 a.m. to noon, at the same Extension Office.  Drip irrigation will save you money and time, providing you learn how to correctly set up your own personalized system, so be sure to call the office again at 509-447-2401 for your reserved seat.

Also on Saturday, May 11, the annual Garden Expo will be held on the campus of Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Admission and parking are both free, with lots of garden-related stuff to do, experience, and buy:  demonstrations, seminars, 250+ vendors, food trucks, garden art, door prizes, and a lot more.  Be sure to bring a wagon or cart to haul your loot, and some cash – and remember to wear sensible shoes.

On Tuesday, May 14, our local garden club will meet in Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for an evening of fun and mental illumination.  We’ll have a class on backyard composting, start rumors about you if you are not in attendance, eat great snacks, and generally misbehave (but in a good way!).  You can always obtain more information on our club’s doings by checking our Facebook group (Elk-Camden garden keepers), or check our blog, here.

That’s it for this month – time to go out into the garden, and I don’t even have to wear snowshoes!