Harvest Dinner reminder

yes, this is an actual reminder for you!  we will be assembling in Camden Grange and Community Center at 7 P.M. this coming tuesday, the 12th of october, for our annual garden club potluck Harvest Dinner.  Please bring your favorite side dish, dessert, bread/rolls, beverages, etc. - the club will provide ham, and fried chicken (yay, "Yokes" delicatessen!).  Also, if you are a holder of a genuine garden club Garden Tour Gnome (lucky you!), please bring the little guy along for their annual conclave.  

We will sumptuously dine, exchange personal rumors and gardening tips, and tell each other what worked and what did not work in our gardens, this year.

side note:  the Elk Park Committee asked us to plant extra pumpkins next year, so they can have a pumpkin patch at their Fall Festival next Autumn - kids can pick their own pumpkins for home carving sort of thing.  so please, plan on raising some cain and also a few spare pumpkins.

see you at the dinner, jim.

Weeding between the lines

WEEDING BETWEEN THE LINES

By Jim McGinty

End of the 2021 garden season, with a couple of “early” (?) frosts in mid-September for many areas of our local community.  Here at Rancho McGinty, I just barely managed to cover the “jungle crops” (cucumbers, and squash) with floating row cover before our low temperatures of +26 degrees Fahrenheit.  So far, the cucumber plants and fruit are still in good shape, and as one might expect, the poisonous squash plants survived to ruin the appetites of folks with functioning taste buds.

Lessons learned this year, out in the garden:  place pre-measured and cut floating row cover near the plants you want to protect (don’t wait until the night of the frost warning!), drip irrigation under black weed block (with pre-cut growing holes) is a GREAT combination for raising onions, leeks, and shallots, drip irrigation with a fertilizer irrigator (“fertigator” – ours is a “Chapin” #4701 inline injector) makes for amazing crops (especially those hungry feeders like corn, squash, pumpkins, and onions), vining crops love to grow up trellises (and that saves you valuable flat garden space), spring-loaded plant support clips (ours are “KingLake” brand) help control those uncontrollable blackberry vines and indeterminate tomatoe branches and stems, weedy gardens still produce a LOT of food, and the big take away for this weather-challenged garden season is (cue all the former and current Boy Scouts of America) Be Prepared for rain, snow, wind, drought, heat, and a lot of “anomalies” you may not have previously experienced in your garden.

In the garden, now is the time cut down all the spent plants, and toss them into the compost heap (except the disease/pest-covered plants – those are best safely burned or trashed).  Please remember to water the compost heaps, as the living occupants need moisture to make all that “brown gold” you want for next Spring.

Now is also a good time to amend the garden soil with manure, leaves, or compost – you will have to decide whether to rototill it all under before Winter, or let it sit on the surface and let the snow do the work for you until Spring.

This is also a good time to prune asparagus, raspberries, blackberries, thyme, and sage, and if you have vast fields (also called “drifts” by the flowering bulb aficionados) of bulbs, and want to thin the numbers, now is the time to dig up and gently work the bulb clusters apart with your fingers, and replant.  Don’t forget to plant your garlic!!

Finally, this is the time to review which plant varieties grew best in our newly-weird garden season weather.  We can recommend “Alaska”, “Sweet Israeli”, and “Optimus” tomatoes, “Dragon Shoyu” cucumbers, “Thelma Sanders” and “Table Queen” acorn squash, “White Globe” radishes, “Dwarf Blue Curly” kale, “Frog Island” purple fava beans, “King Richard” leeks, “Texas Giant” white onions, and any of the “candy” series of onions (red, and yellow).

GARDEN CALENDAR:

On the 12^th of October, our local garden club will hold its last 2021 meeting and annual Harvest Dinner at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange and Community Center.  This being a potluck dinner, club members and friends are encouraged to bring their favorite side dish (made from your garden ingredients!), bread/rolls, dessert, and drinks.  If you are a holder of a coveted Garden Club Tour Gnome, remember to bring him along, as they hold a parallel conclave while we dine and commiserate over this year’s gardening experience.  You can keep up with our club’s activities by checking our website (www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com), or by accessing our Facebook page.

On the 13^th of October, Camden Grange and Community Center will offer a class on dehydrating veggies and fruit, from 7 – 9 P.M.  Taught by Lauri Chamberlin, the class will offer instruction and tips on safely converting all those baskets of produce into delicious munchies and cooking ingredients that will last MUCH longer than they would in the back of your refrigerator.  Class cost is a paltry $5 per person, which includes a handout and the opportunity to ask questions of someone who actually knows what they are doing!

That’s it for now, and for this garden season – our 2022 gardens will be WAY better than this year’s garden!

September meeting warning notice

we will be meeting tuesday evening, the 14th of september, at 7 P.M. in Camden Grange.  we will have a short class, at member request, on how to wrap up our gardens before the onset of winter, and then a demonstration, by club members marlene and stephanie, on how to make those cool garden-art LED-light filled jars and bottles.  following a snack break, we'll tackle questions and answers, 2021 garden experiences, and start rumors about YOU if you are not in attendance.  members are asked to bring some of their favorite snack items, and the club will provide hot drinks.  

next month, our meeting will consist of our annual potluck Harvest Dinner, to which members bring side dishes, desserts, bread objects, and so forth.  the club will provide a meat-like substance, or recently-harvested (but in good condition!) roadkill as a main dish, and the club will also provide hot and cold drinks.  for those lucky few, now is the time to dust off your Garden Gnome(s) - jus' sayin'!

the Grange main hall is currently filled with great stuff from the recent yard sale benefitting Camden Grange, so if you see something you just gotta have, you can make an offer during the meeting to club member/Grange member Marylee Rozelle.

speaking of Camden Grange, Friends of Camden Grange are reminded of the lunch potluck/reorganization meeting on saturday, the 18th of September at 1 P.M. in the aforementioned Camden Grange.  'Nuff said!

see you at one or more of the meetings, jim.

509-292-0326

August garden tour slides

we will shortly have the slideshow from the august garden tour up and available for your viewing pleasure on the club's blogsite here, and on the club's facebook page.  thanks to our tour hosts Carol and Scott Wood, and thanks to club videographer Geoff Carson for the excellent sideshow.  as always, thanks to our club blogmeister Su Chism, and to Facebook page administrator Geoff Carson for their continuing efforts to educate and entertain us.

our september meeting will be indoors at Camden Grange, on the 14th at 7 p.m., so be sure to mark your appointment calendar.  

in this heat (99 degrees F. today), i hope your garden is thriving and staying wet.  i know it's traumatic to think beyond your next iced drink, but now is the time to plant short season (60 days or less) seedlings/starts for that autumn garden:  cabbage, kale, radishes, broccoli, lettuce, etc., will probably (?!) be ready to harvest before the first breath of winter.

be careful out there, jim

Garden club August tour!

We will be touring on Tuesday, the 10th of August, departing from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a 25 minute drive to a beautiful, huge garden near Wilderness Lake.  The garden is grown as a food producing project; lots of sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, even non-ornamental squash (still poisonous!), all to feed the gardener's family.  For those of you whose gardens have not been as successful as in past years due to our drought conditions, you won't want to miss this tour.  Please read this entire email for some important information concerning road conditions in the area we are visiting.

Since our last tour of this year will be a garden in the Fertile Valley area off of highway 2, it is important the tour convoy stays together.  To help facilitate a successful arrival, here is a heads-up of the route we'll be taking; we will drive north from the Grange, over Camden Gap and then turn left on Scotia Road to Highway 2, turning south toward Spokane. (At this point, I would tell you to watch for the Pend Oreille County "Fertile Valley Road" sign, but some reprobate recently stole it!)  Anyway, we will turn right onto Fertile Valley Road and proceed toward Wilderness Lake.  Wilderness Lake is a privately-owned lake, and the homes are in a gated community, so the gardener will meet us at the gate and convoy us back to her garden.  (Please be aware that the dirt/gravel roads are not up to even county road speeds (think Madison and Bridges road conditions on steroids but narrower) so we'll all cautiously drive around the corners and up the hills.  The driveway up to the gardener's home is steep and switch-backed (is that a word?), so some club members may want to carpool with a member driving an all-wheel or four-wheel car or truck.  Once at the top of the hill/driveway, please pull forward around the looping driveway so there is room for everyone to park.  Then gather in the driveway so we can open the meeting, make our presentation, and move to the garden as a group.

Should be a fun, final evening for the 2021 club garden touring season.  In September we will have a short, but appropriate, class and maybe an impromptu homegrown veggie competition for:  largest, weirdest, and most deeply disturbing vegetable and/or fruit.

See you this Tuesday at Camden Grange.

jim.

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

 

This is an ongoing year of gardening challenges, and I hope we are all up for the changes and the lessons to be learned.

I know that my garlic patch was pretty pathetic this year, with reduced yields and smaller bulb size, BUT I determined that I will be sure to save the biggest and best bulbs as seed garlic for September planting.  Clearly, the best of the harvest somehow managed to survive and thrive with late cold weather, drought, and intense heat – and it still tastes like great garlic!

Here at Rancho McGinty, the bean plants (green beans, fava beans) are still struggling, as well as the cucumber plants.

Looking good however, are the malignant squash plants which are loving the heat, and surprisingly, the cabbage and kale plants are free of cabbage looper worm holes – that last frost must have killed off the adults and the eggs?  

Also looking like we might have a great harvest are the cool weather (?) crops:  potatoes, onions, leeks, scallions, rutabagas, beets, and the radishes – ohmygosh, are the radishes ever crunchy and delicious!

Overall, not too bad, and we are only mid-way through Summer:  the keys to harvesting actual food will be adequate water, nutrition (manure, fertilizer), and perhaps shade cloth for the plants that look like they might fall victim to sunscald (dry, yellow/brown leaves).

If you have not already thinned your melon/squash/pumpkin vines down to just a couple/three good-looking fruits, now is the time to do so – IF you want to harvest ripe (!), mature edibles, and not a bunch of “almost there” unripe food.

Raspberry and blackberry plants will need a LOT of water now to produce ripe, juicy fruit – don’t stint on the liquids (adding manure tea or compost tea to the base of the plants would also be a great idea).  Once the canes have finished producing fruit, be sure to prune out the expended brown canes – we want the purple/green canes for next Spring’s flowers.

If your potatoes are poking their selves out of the dirt/mulch into the sunlight, be sure to hill some more dirt/mulch over the spuds and some of the lower leaves – believe me, the plants will only make better, bigger, and more potatoes, minus the green skin and contents.

In the orchard, now is a good time to finish thinning the maturing fruit – six inches between fruit is a good minimum – no knocking each other around in the wind equals less bruising, and therefore more excellent goodies.  And don’t forget to prune out all of those suckers – they just take advantage of the energy the struggling trees can otherwise use to make fruit, and stay healthy.

GARDEN CALENDAR:

I am not aware of any face-to-face or zoom gardening classes happening in our area, but you CAN check in with our local gardening club on-line to see what we are doing this month:   elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or you can also check our Facebook page for updates.

That’s it for now – ninety-four degrees at six P.M. today, makes for a long day for the people, livestock, and the green stuff in the garden and orchard.  Water, food, shelter – the basics are true for us all.  Stay cool!

 

 

 

July garden tour

yes, we will be assembling at Camden Grange on 13 July 2021 for a tour of a large-scale family garden near Miller's One Stop - we toured this garden a number of years ago, and the size, quality, and quantity of food this family produces continues to amaze me.  we will depart the Grange at 7 P.M., for the short drive - please remember that the Fridiger Road bridge is out, and some of us will be detouring as well as touring 😁.  our tour garden is a family-sized operation, with enough veggies and fruit for fresh eating, canning, dehydrating, etc.  the family also raises goats, sheep, chickens, and pigs - altogether, a nice, integrated system.

we will also be touring in august for the last time this year - generally, the weather for september evenings is at least unpredictable, and a tad dark for intimate viewing.  we will have an appropriate indoor class, and some of our club's usual camaraderie, snacks, and group craziness.

see you tuesday evening, jim.