Freebies for gardeners

Long time club member Barbara Midtbo has some freebies for other club members:  patio pots, drip line and connectors, and deer netting (black vinyl, 48" high, ¼  to 1/2" openings).  if you are interested in picking up these items, you can e-mail her at bamidtbo@gmail.com.

Don't delay.

jim

September garden club meeting!

We're on a countdown to the end of the local gardening season: predictions for the date of the first killing frost?

Tuesday evening (the11th of September), we will meet in Camden grange at 7 p.m. for our monthly meeting.  this month we will focus on two activities:

1.  A tomatoe tasting!  Everyone is invited to bring samples of their favorite tomato(es).  It would help if you remember the variety names of the tomatoes, and maybe write them down so the rest of us can take notes for next year's garden. Please expect that some wise, knowledgeable, long-time gardener will ask you for some of the goopy seeds from their new favorite tomato - we're weird that way.

2. A short class on raising garlic  I'll bet I have talked to a dozen gardeners about the process of raising gourmet garlic just in this short month - this is the time to start your garlic planning.  I will also bring some garlic bulbs to taste (mild, spicy, and hot varieties), and there may be extras to take home.

Club members are asked to bring some of their favorite snacks (could be garlic-based!?), and the club will provide seasonally-appropriate beverages.

Please remember that our October 9 meeting will be our last meeting for 2018, and is the occasion for our annual harvest dinner. Now is the time to think about what you can make/bake/process from your garden or orchard - the club will provide the meat course (road kill dependent - I never know what I will find in the ditch), and those with a coveted garden club tour gnome will want to bring the little guy along for their annual conclave.

See you there,

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Hot times in the garden, here at Rancho McGinty: ripening tomatoes, peppers, green beans, ornamental and poisonous squash, blackberries, strawberries, and more!

With all this harvesting and eating (!), comes the understanding that the end of our gardening season is rapidly approaching, and we have some decisions to make: when do we start clipping off the new blossoms and young fruit, as we know they will not mature before the first killing frost, and do we have time to plant and harvest another crop of cool weather, short season veggies, such as radishes, kale, lettuce, etc.

As well, it’s also time to start building up the garden soil for next spring’s planting – time to add compost, aged manure, barnyard straw and animal poo, hardwood tree leaves, and so much more.  I like to layer up all those amendments, and then in mid-September, rototill it all into the soil, and let the Autumn rains and early snows ferment the mixture all winter long.

Shortly, of course, we will all (this means you!) be collecting our fallen tree leaves, as well as the bags of leaves from our cooperating neighbors (you did remember to bribe your neighbors all summer with tasty garden treats, right!?).  Those black bags of leafy goodness will be the basis for next spring’s compost, and they can also be used now as a weed-blocking mulch for your newly-planted garlic plot.

In the orchard, the Italian plums are nearly ready to harvest, so I’m watering the trees on a regular basis – to ensure a bountiful crop of plums next year, remember to prune those plum trees just after harvest, and not next Spring. The Anjou pears still need another month or so before harvest, while I just collected the crop of Centennial crabapples – small (3-inch diameter), but sweet and delicious, and they make an amazingly good apple jelly (no pectin needed!).

In the garden, the potato leaves are turning yellow and brown, indicating that we will soon be digging up delicious spuds, and the onion stalks are leaning over, telling us that it will soon be time to plan a meal based around sliced, fried potatoes, onions, and garlic – oh yes!

In the berry garden, now is the time to prune out the older brown canes that produced all those luscious berries – you can do this pruning next spring as well, but we seem to have more time at the end of the gardening season, than at the Mega-task, cramped-for-time beginning of the season. This year, I did remember to freeze some blackberries for mid-winter milkshakes – I just placed the individual ripe berries on trays or in ice cube tray compartments, and then squeezed them into the freezer – once frozen solid, I placed the berries in zip-top bags.

Mid-September is when I like to plant my garlic: I dig a 4-inch deep trough, and place the individual cloves, pointy side up, about 6 inches apart – I cover with garden soil, tamp the area over the cloves with the back of a bow rake to ensure good soil contact, then water deeply overnight.  The next day, I cover the whole garlic patch with 6 inches of tree leaves (remember the discussion we had earlier about saving those leaves?), and then leave the garlic to do its thing all winter.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On September 11, our local garden club will meet inside Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a gardening-related class (details on the meeting and class will be available here and at our new facebook page), and lots of gardening bragging, lying, trading of stories and techniques, and general fun. Club members are asked to bring along some of their favorite treats, and the club will provide seasonally-appropriate beverages. The general public and families are always welcome at our meetings, and we hope you will drop into see us – almost all of us have bathed this summer at least once, but we should be able to leave a few windows open for “sensitive” folks. :)

See you out in the garden.

Garden tour report, August 2018

Twenty-one avid gardeners from our club visited the delightful garden and farm of Kelly and Ray Verdel on the 14th August. We saw a multi-family, production garden with rows of sweet corn, kale, green beans, and much more. The garden is partly watered by a homebuilt gravity-flow system, and Kelly uses no chemical pesticides. We also toured Kelly's outdoor (hot weather) canning kitchen (nicely provided with delicious snacks for our intrepid bunch), and goat, chicken, and pig facilities. It was an excellent evening, and I watched quite a few gardeners taking notes and pictures for future projects on their own farms. Many thanks to our tour guides: Kelly, and her sons Raymond and Beau.

Jim

Garden club tour warning notice

This coming Tuesday, the 14th of August, will be our last club garden tour for this year. We will be touring the garden of Kelly and Ray Verdel, located at 3607 E. Bridges Road, directly across Highway 2 from Miller's One Stop.  

We will meet at Camden grange at 7 p.m., and convoy/carpool for the short drive. Please do not arrive early at Kelly's garden, as she will be quite busy preparing for our tour. We will park our cars on the gravel driveway south and east of the Verdel residence - please do not park on the grass lawns.  

Kelly has an extensive multi-family garden, with some crops already harvested and preserved for consumption, and has a lot of veggies and fruit to go. If you have questions during the tour, Kelly said she will be happy to talk with us about gardens, chickens, goats, gravity-fed water systems, and food preservation (Kelly has a really nice outdoor kitchen for summer canning), and other topics as well.

Next month, our club meeting will be a garden-related class inside the grange, as the pre-winter darkness will be upon us.  

Jim

Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

So the question has changed from “when will the summer heat arrive?!” to “when will the autumn rains arrive?!.” Thus far, the garden (food supply) is literally “cooking right along,, with daily 95-degree heat, and every-other-day deep water soakings from the drip irrigation system in each raised bed. If the summer heat and lack of rain continues unabated, we gardeners may be faced with deciding which crop/plant/tree/orchard needs water the most, while the other plants wither and barely survive.  

Yes, lots of organic matter, fertilizer/manure, excellent drainage, and careful plant variety selection can go a long way to increasing the likelihood of an actual harvest – but (there is always a “but” in the gardening world), our weather (driven by effects of the sun) has the final word. Our pioneer ancestors hedged their winter food supply bets by growing large gardens, harvesting local wild edibles, hunting/fishing/trapping, and trading within their communities – but, even the most organized and efficient family could find themselves in the “hungry times” from late winter to mid spring, when the food cupboard was bare, and there was very little to harvest or eat in the garden. We are all literal descendents of those hardy (and let’s face it, lucky) generations – we’re still here, so darn it, let’s learn how to garden like we mean it!

Here at Rancho McGinty, the recent high temperatures have set back the pollination efforts by the tomatoes, peppers, and the poisonous, ornamental squash. Pollen (according to some experts) just does not work when a certain temperature range is exceeded – LOTS of flowers and blossoms, but no actual fruit. We did harvest our first tomatoes of the year last week, when we tasted fruit from the Balkonoy plants – the short season, Siberian type produces deep orange, medium acid, 2-inch diameter tastiness on a short, easy to raise plant.  Good stuff!

The garlic crop is currently curing back in the forest (I like to tie bundles of five or six garlic plants to a rope stretched between trees in the sunlight-dappled grassy meadows – that was kind of lyrical, huh?), and I will soon clean the individual bulbs by cutting off the stalk at about 2 inches above the bulb, removing most of the roots, and rubbing off the dirt on the outside skins. This year’s garlic harvest was pretty good:  the excellent-tasting Polish Red bulbs are huge (larger than a hardball), the Lahontan mild garlic bulbs are increasing in size and “garlic-iness” (I don’t think that is an actual word), while the hot and spicy Georgia Fire bulbs were few and far between – I don’t know what happened, though I seriously doubt the gopher invaders would enjoy biting into THOSE bulbs!

The great Alaska-based Sweet Corn Experiment was a limited disaster:  small, short plants, and small, delicious corn cobs – I think the black plastic sheeting just heated the soil too much, and stunted growth.  

We started harvesting some limited amounts of potatoes – we just could not wait for actual plant  and spud maturity – we want some fresh, delicious mashed potatoes, and we want them now!  Our Viking Purple potato plants produce killer mashed potato makings.  Remember to hill dirt or place mulch alongside the potatoe plants to keep direct sunlight off of the emerging spuds – we want those tubers covered.

Overall, a good start to the harvest season – just remember to keep checking the soil conditions around your plants: using your Mark I Moisture Meter (your finger pushed into the dirt alongside your plant bases), note whether the finger is wet, damp, dry, or has been seized by malevolent moles! The old standard of “an inch of water every week” is no longer valid when summer temperatures reach our recent highs.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On August 5, those valued vegetation volunteers, the Master Gardeners of Pend Orville Count, will offer their 26th annual garden tour:  for a mere $12, you can pick up a self-guiding map to a collection of outstanding Newport-area gardens, open from 1-4:30 p.m. The tour will include the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden, and will also feature five additional gardens showing gardening techniques such as raised beds, drip irrigation, lasagna gardening, square-foot gardening, and much more. You can pick up your map at the extension office (227-A S. Garden Ave., Newport) from 12:30-1:30 p.m.If you have questions about the tour, you may call the office at 509-447-2401.

On August 14, our local gardening club will hold its last tour of the summer: we will visit a local, multi-family garden, featuring large crops of veggies and fruit – their annual garden harvest feeds these families, so expect to see long rows of beets, corn, cabbage, and additional fruit trees and bushes, and more.  We will leave Camden Grange promptly at 7 p.m. for the short drive to the garden, so be sure to bring your various cameras, notebooks, and questions on how grow family-sized gardens, and then preserve that harvest for later meals.

Additional details on the tour will be available on here on the blog, or you can check our new Facebook page.

That’s it for this month – see you out in the garden – remember to wear sun block and appropriate clothing in the sizzling sun, drink lots of hydrating beverages, and a salt tablet may be necessary to eliminate those nasty charlie-horse cramps.

July tour: raised beds, shady seating area

On July 20th, our garden club toured the home garden of club members Judith and Larry: very nice garden and layout, with large shade trees (the coolth was much appreciated in the 90-degree heat), raised beds, drip irrigation, casual tables and chairs, gazebos and ornaments, and much more to see - I saw a LOT of pictures being taken for later consumption.  Speaking of consumption, we also tasted seven different flavors of home made goat cheese (courtesy of club member and full-time wife, Pat), and Judith and Larry also baked a delicious strawberry-rhubarb cobbler, served with vanilla ice cream!  All in all, an excellent tour - thank you Judith and Larry, and please enjoy the presence of your much-sought after Club Garden Gnome.

jim