Gardening in Central Oregon: August 2015

Sunday, August 30, 2015

My OMG Failures

A friend of mine listened patiently to my gardening complaints today and suggested that a posting about my (many) failures might be pretty funny. Really? Funny?? Oooo, she's probably right since I do manage to flame out in pretty strange ways, for someone who's supposed to be trained as a Master Gardener!

Here's a list of My More Masterful Ideas:

1. Feed the local birds a gourmet diet: plant strawberries in a raingutter and hang it near the bird feeder, just to be sure they don't miss the red strawberries when they ripen.

The rain gutter idea was a good one - I attached it to the outer edge of the porch railing so that the strawberries would grow above the wood and brighten the view with the green mounds of leaves, dotted with red berries. I did cover it all with "bird netting" but the netting only seems to work by tangling the less agile birds. And when they get caught, I naturally run out to help them get loose and fly away (to return another day to eat the berries).

2. Feed the local deer a healthy diet: plant the green beans so the vines will grow up the veggie garden fence.

This one really isn't my fault. I built a really nice trellis inside the garden, arching over the walkway and ending beside the fence. Of course, since it's very happy green bean plant (about 8 of them, actually) the twinny little tendrils launched out and attached to the fence while I was away from home one week in early August.

Imagine how happy the deer were to discover the abundance of green beans at their eye level! How conveniently grown. No wonder they visit every morning, probably anxious to see what wonderful things I've provided for them to eat that day.

3. Put the Tanglefoot (a very sticky material intended to trap traveling insects like ants and weevils) on the bird feeder's post BEFORE you put it up: this way you're sure to get covered in the pine sap-like product that you will, before you realize it, transfer to your clothing, the lawn chair that was on the path to the feeder, the neighbor's cat who desperately needed a chin scratch, the door knob going back in the house, the light switch beside the bathroom sink...

4. Encourage the self-seeding Sunflowers and Hollyhocks (they're free and the birds really love them): this way you won't have to worry about weeds in the veggie garden since the 8' tall Sunflowers and Hollyhocks will block all access to the veggie garden. Cutting them down seems criminal since the birds really love them - which is probably how the veggie garden became overwhelmed with both plants. Every May I promise to pull out the little plants but it's so hard to do when nothing else is growing so well - by August, it's a jungle of towering plants, toppling into the other plants and walkway from the sheer weight of the flowerheads. But the birds love them so much (more than my hubby loves the squashes and cabbages)!

5. Be sure to start enough tomato (zucchini, squash, zinnia, sweet pea, calendula, lettuce) plants in late Winter; after all, not all 4 zucchini plants may survive: by the time all 6 tomato plants are ready to be planted out in the garden, you'll find the 7 plants that last year's fallen heirloom tomatoes have sprouted. Pretty soon, you're reverse panhandling: "please, dear neighbor, take some tomato (squash, marigold, spinach) plants for your garden!" Of course, if they're as over zealous as you are, they're trying to get rid of their own extra plants. And that's how I've grown cucumbers in my back porch flower pots, lettuce in my flower garden, and chives all over the yard. To be honest, the unusual placement of the veggies is quite attractive and attention-getting. I may intentionally repeat it next year (like I have a choice - I always start too many plants).

And who could complain about too many tomatoes???

What have you done that raises eyebrows and makes your family question your sanity? What 'mistakes' turned out so well you'd do them again? Share your experiences with us in the Comments, below.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Late August Garden Tips

The Summer is winding down? Really? Is it fair to say that when the temps this week have been in the mid-80s? But my garden is getting tired: the flower stems are long and leggy, the corn is being harvested daily, and even the lawn looks a bit scruffy (I like to fertilize in the early Fall).

So it's time to evaluate and appreciate this year's garden and do what's necessary to get "us" happily into the Fall.

First, deadhead all those zinnias, petunias, geraniums, Shasta daisies - they'll give one last bloom before the frost if the old blooms are snipped off. A light feeding (more phosporus than nitrogen - a fertilizer with larger middle number than the other two) will keep the flowers happy.

Second, DON'T feed the tomatoes! Your plan should be to get all those lovely green tomatoes already on the plant to finish growing and start ripening. Fertilizing now will encourage the plant to start new tomatoes and they'll never reach ripening stage before the frosts. You want the plant to put all its energy into ripening, not growing new stems or fruit.

Third, remember to nip the flowering tips off the herbs to keep them going. I've been trimming stems on my basil back to the lowest branch - see the red line in the picture? Trimming it back

trim basil ever other week

causes the side shoots to grow into full stems and make the plant bushier - with more leaves. If you take the basil (or other herb) inside for the winter, continue to pinch off new stems until the plant is exhausted. I keep a Basil and a Rosemary plant in my living room all winter - careful pruning/pinching of the Rosemary gives me a tiny Christmas tree in December.

Fourth, get some deep watering around your trees. Once the ground freezes, you'll have to wait for a good thaw in January or February to water again, so don't let the trees start the winter dehydrated. It's a fallacy to think that a dormant tree doesn't need any water - if we get a good snowfall or three, they'll be quite happy but in the last few years we haven't been able to count on much winter precipitation. Treat them right and give them a good soak now.

Excuse me, it that YOUR homegrown mint?

Fifth, pull up a chair and appreciate all your hard work! It'll be gone soon (tradititonally, our first hard frosts are in early September) and everything will be back to that winter brown and gray. Put your feet up, have a little snack and enjoy the beauty you created. We'll talk again soon about Fall chores but for now, pat yourself on the back - it looks great out there!

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Managing Those Pests

We recently got a new kitty - our senior male cat has become more of a floor mat than a cat and I hoped a new kitty would shake up his world a little. But it seems that she's shaken up everyone's world around here!

She was brought to the Humane Society as a sick & pregnant 2 year old, found on the street. Once they nursed her back to health and she had her kittens, she was ready for adoption. The Redmond shelter was wonderful, letting us walk around the rooms with the cats, experiencing their different personalities. When we saw this little calico girl, we fell in love - and then the volunteer got out the laser and our new love chased it all over the room. Love at (almost) first sight.

She's been home with us for about a month now and is all settled in. Since we live on a dead-end street with no traffic and no free-roaming dogs, we knew she'd enjoy exploring our half acre property. Little did we know that she'd take over everything except the mortgage!

We seem to have a serious infestation of grasshoppers every summer. They jump and fly in my face as I walk across the garden - and their munching makes the plants look bedraggled and ugly. No longer - the little Terror of the Neighborhood loves to leap up and pull them out of the air! Then she bites them in half, obviously enjoying her new-found job as resident hunter.

When the grasshoppers began to avoid her (or she's killed off enough of them to make a difference), she must have decided to find another victim - and now she's after the voles and chipmunks. I've been plagued by them both, eating the plants in my greenhouse and even coming up on my elevated deck to eat the container plants. One chipmunk spent its days munching sunflower seeds in the bird feeder, eating the flowers in the pots, and sleeping it off in a tiny, almost unreachable space between the plants. Not any more - she watched the chipmunk from the window until she knew "his" routine and then went out and had him for lunch! It was frightening to watch, but I had to admire her tenacity.

She's even challenged the local deer - growling and arching her back when they appear in the garden. The same behavior worked on the neighbor's dog but I'm not so sure it's going to stop the flower-eating deer in our yard. Since she's a tiny cat, I really love her attitude.

We try hard to not use pesticides at our house - I love the bees and butterflies that seem to hang out in our garden all summer long. It means that sometimes our plants look a little abused with holes in some leaves and stems with no flowers. But now I've got a new pest management plan: let the Terror of the Neighborhood loose in the garden and step away from the sprayer. She knows her job and she's doing it well.

Now if she'd just stop bringing her half-eaten trophies home and leaving them on the doormat to decompose, she'd be a great addition to my integrated pest management!

Update: on Friday, September 4th, she brought home (to the back door mat) 3 voles: two dead, one still alive enough for her to chase it around the back porch containers for 30 minutes. I don't expect to see many voles in our yard this winter!

Friday, August 7, 2015

The Incredible Lightness of Bee-ing

I love to sit and weed - it's such a peaceful, Zen-like thing to do on a pleasant summer day. I never use ear buds to listen to music and my phone is turned off so I can hear the garden; the rustle of the leaves in the little gusts of wind, the continuous chirping of the birds in the trees and, especially, my friendly local honey bees and bumblebees.

My hubby and I are tickled each year when the early summer weather helps the cat mint to bloom and attract the big, fat, clumsy-looking bumble bees. They always make us laugh when they perch on the tiny blue flowers causing the short stems to bend almost to the ground with their weight.

This is a Honey Bee

Have you ever looked at a bee on a flower? If they've been working at it for a while, they'll be coated in yellow pollen - almost discoloring their fuzzy black bodies. They have little saddlebags on their "hips" where they pack the nectar to bring it back to the hive and it's easy to see on the fat bumble bees.

I often hear people worrying about "bee" stings. But when they describe the insect (long smooth body, yellow and black bands of color) and where they saw it (at the picnic table, foraging in the abandoned hamburger), I can assure them it's a wasp or a yellow jacket they're describing, NOT a bee.

This is a Yellow Jacket Wasp

You can pretty safely assume a bee won't sting you unless you're directly threatening its nest - they die if they sting, when their stinger is ripped from their body. A wasp (a yellow jacket is a variety of wasp) will sting if you stop them in their hunt for food or threaten their nest. Actually, by keeping them from hunting for your hamburger, they probably think you are threatening their nest since they need to build up reserves for the winter. And they can sting repeatedly without harming themselves.

But the bees are our primary source of food - did you know that one of every three servings of food on your family's table is due to bees and other pollinators? The humble bee helps the squash blossom, the carrot umbel, the tomato flower develop into a fruit. Without bees we wouldn't have most of our agricultural crops including alfalfa, onions, cherries, apples, watermelon, raspberries, almonds (and many other nuts) and our flowers.

Recently I read an article in the Washington Post that said that we don't need to worry, the bees aren't dying in huge numbers - that it was all a fabrication. I was quite surprised since no beekeeper or university source agrees with the conservative organization that claimed a resurgence of the bee population this summer. Indeed, deeper reading revealed that the source of the optimism are beekeepers who said they're buying new queens, new hives, and using all available measures to save their bees from extinction. They're trying desperately to protect their bees from the ravages of temperature change, illness, and increased pesticide usage.

There may be hope for the bees when more and more homeowners, farmers and small-tract growers think globally and act locally to plant organic when feasible, develop native habitat around their crops, limit pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) and support local growers selling local products.