PNW: Winter 2014

Pruning class on Saturday.

Lotta rain tonight, flood watch advisory through Saturday. Pretty warm lately, well into the 50's, which is odd for this time of year. I guess why this time it's not snow, unlike the last stormy weather session we had.

Winter-sown crops are sounding better and better. Starting to save up cartons.

There's a property next door that was bought years ago but never built on. I'm starting to wonder if I could grow a little something on it ... maybe something pretty much deer-proof. Even just flowers would be nice, to help out the bees.

Boffer, I love that snowy photo.

One benefit of the Master Gardener's class is group ordering. The president of the local Master Gardener's association is putting together a big order of onion plants. With over 50 students in the class, he's expecting it to be somewhere between two and three dollars per bunch, with about 60 in a bunch.

I already have onions planted for overwintering -- Red Westerfield, I think. I ordered some for spring planting from the MG group yesterday -- another red, I forget the name, and one called Alisa Craig, just because the onions can supposedly get up to (gulp!) six pounds! I just wanna have some of those just to look at 'em! So I think I'll have something like ... well, much of three 8 x 2+ foot beds planted with onions. Let's say 180 onions? Good thing I like onions.

Marc love hearing about your class   what a great opportunity to purchase some onions on a group discount.....not sure if this would be to much to plant on the next door plot.....but...you could try a three sisters garden   its corn, beans, pumpkins/squash the way it's planted, it keeps out raccoons but im thinking it should keep out deer too ?

our tiny seedlings of lettuce are coming up   the cole crop seedlings are starting to get a bit of fluff, so they should be up soon too.....and our onions and leeks out in the green house are doing well.....

yesterday we pruned our front yard BTE fruit trees, bushes and rose plants.....and we found a surprise....our tulips, daffodils and other flower bulbs are all coming up   a lot more garlic too!

happy gardening
rose..... who is relaxing while hubby is cooking dinner tonight  

Marc Iverson wrote:The wind is really going; clouds are slipping across the sky like they're late for an appointment.  The rhodies are occasionally clacking against the side of the house, and their leaves are flickering. Blue sky comes and goes.  The trees are bending a bit, sometimes shaking a lot.

"

I like your prose, Marc.

FamilyGardening wrote:Marc love hearing about your class   what a great opportunity to purchase some onions on a group discount.....not sure if this would be to much to plant on the next door plot.....but...you could try a three sisters garden   its corn, beans, pumpkins/squash the way it's planted, it keeps out raccoons but im thinking it should keep out deer too ?

Thanks, FamilyGardening! My squash did so miserably, and so did my corn, that I'm scared of trying corn and squash next year. And corn too! I will probably try a space or two of squash, but don't want to commit much to what has been such an unsuccessful crop for me until I figure out what I might be doing wrong.

our tiny seedlings of lettuce are coming up   the cole crop seedlings are starting to get a bit of fluff, so they should be up soon too.....and our onions and leeks out in the green house are doing well.....

That's cool to see. I envy you your leeks! They're so dang expensive in the store ...
[/quote]

Did grape pruning at our weekly greenhouse hours for the MG program. A chain link fence at the back of the greenhouse area has old grape vines, thick as small trees, on it overgrown. They are overgrown with dry branching vines, some packed so densely that they wove themselves together, making it hard to tell which vine came from which plant. Pruning left us with lots of long vines which could be cut into several new starts each. Some will be sold at the annual spring sale. There were also plenty left over, free for the taking by students. I was tempted, but the neighbor whose place I garden in has grapes he has ignored for years. So I should tend to those first, if I'm really all that interested in grapes. No idea if his are table grapes, though. He was very into wine-making, so the grapes may make for poor eating. I guess I'll ask him.

The outdoor lamb's quarters/mache/corn salad are finally starting to grow higher than a quarter inch or so, due to our long bout of unseasonably warm weather combined with rain. Woo hoo! I'm dying to try the stuff.

Saw peppermint at a local store and couldn't stop myself from getting a couple of plants. I love all mint, and the smell of peppermint is so wonderful. I planted some last year that was successful, but it finally succumbed to late blight.

Kelejan wrote:

Marc Iverson wrote:The wind is really going; clouds are slipping across the sky like they're late for an appointment.  The rhodies are occasionally clacking against the side of the house, and their leaves are flickering. Blue sky comes and goes.  The trees are bending a bit, sometimes shaking a lot.

"

I like your prose, Marc.

Thanks, Kelejan. Windy weather has so much character. I love it when nature is actually doing something and not just sitting around.

Marc Iverson wrote:

Kelejan wrote:

Marc Iverson wrote:The wind is really going; clouds are slipping across the sky like they're late for an appointment.  The rhodies are occasionally clacking against the side of the house, and their leaves are flickering. Blue sky comes and goes.  The trees are bending a bit, sometimes shaking a lot.

"

I like your prose, Marc.

Thanks, Kelejan.  Windy weather has so much character.  I love it when nature is actually doing something and not just sitting around.

I guess you like the current weather in the American West, then? Or Maybe England where I come from.   

Yeah, I do. I lived for 25 years in Southern California, where every day looks exactly the same. It can not rain for a year at a time, and the wind stagnates under the yellowing inversion layer that holds the pollution close to the ground. Whatever dust falls or grime accumulates, stays for good. You don't get much of a sense of time passing when the world looks and feels the same every day. You just eventually feel older.

Here in Oregon, I feel myself earning my years rather than having them sneak up on me. When I see the seasons change, I feel part of something. Nature doesn't appear to have simply washed her hands of us. Her being part of things makes me feel part of things too.

Marc stated:  "You don't get much of a sense of time passing when the world looks and feels the same every day.  (in Los Angeles)  You just eventually feel older.

Here in Oregon, I feel myself earning my years rather than having them sneak up on me."

Amen.  I used to feel sorry for my cousin near Disneyland, where they don't have real winters or summers like we do in Fresno.  Well, this winter was very unique with little rain, fog or hail, and lots of sunshine.  No snow to speak of for the skiers or to just drive up the mountains and play in it.  If it wasn't for for the early December cold snap that killed the spaghetti squash and tips of orange leaves, we wouldn't have had a winter!

On this Forum, though, I see what REAL winters look like.   

Yup. We had one. Pipes at our wellhead froze. Not cute. Expensive. Weather gathered all up in a row, ready to be dealt with. And me there in my chilly morning clothes, half-proud that I left the window open all night, half-scared to get out from under the covers and continue a day at least as cold as the air around me.

Went to the weekly Master Gardener's class today. Top-notch highly-educated teacher/professional practitioners. It was all about trees and invasive insects/fungi, except for a short bit at the end about garden critters. Really good class and I learned a lot. Ended up with a walk through the surrounding neighborhood in which we looked for and discussed problems with the local plantings, including trees right outside the master gardener's building itself.

One of the main sets of ideas I took away was how important it was to plant the tree at the right level and keep mulch away from the trunk to prevent rot. Walking around the neighborhood, we saw many trees planted too deeply; digging a foot into the soil, we uncovered rot on some of them. It's vital to leave the "flare," which is the, well, part where the trunk flares out when it meets the ground, at ground level and above.

Came home and checked my hoop-covered beds. I only have two of them. The strong winds blew some of my none-too-strong clips off my row cover, letting parts of the beds get uncovered. That helped weeds get established very quickly in a small area in one of them, and all over the place in another smaller bed, where I'll need to get cracking. The red brussels sprouts there are still small plants, but they've weathered the coldest driest winter in 20 years very well. The daikon have nice leaves on them, but refuse to turn into substantial roots yet. Oh well. At least they look very healthy on top. The onions are doing great, but a number of their leaf stalks got bent by either the wind or the row cover being blown back against them when the cover got loose. Still green though, so nothing too drastic. I'm thinking these months in the ground must be doing them some good. Heck, they were only sets when I started and now they're anywhere from three to maybe five inches tall.

Can't wait to get and plant the new onions I group-ordered with the Master Gardeners, especially the umm ... Alicia Craig? Alison Craig? ... yellow onions that supposedly can get up to six inches across and weigh six pounds! Gulp! That would be fun just to see, never mind the eating. I like all onions anyway, though, so I don't see how I could fail to love them unless I accidentally kill them.

Ailsa Craig, Mark?  I know there are potatoes named that, after an uninhabited  Scottish Island.

That is where almost all the curling stones come from. Sterile, you can't breed from them.

Yeah, I think that's it. Alisa or Alicia Craig. I mentioned them in a previous post, and used that name. I don't have the catalogue to confirm though, or even know the name of the company. It's all being ordered for us.

Marc what an interesting class you had to today with such great information!

  Thank you again for sharing with us what you are learning!


I don't remember if you said what kind of Brussels sprouts you planted? that's great they have survived such a cold and harsh winter!

so far all of our attempts to grow Brussels sprouts have always been over come by aphids, so this year I want to grow some for a fall winter or even over winter them to see if we can eat some this time....I figure growing them in the colder months would keep the bugs away we would just have to fight the slugs....which we are hoping we can teach our new chicks/chickens to love slugs and be able to take care of those pesky icky critters...

even though some of them I think are pretty neat looking
  

sorry to hear the wind got to your hoops!

happy gardening
rose

FamilyGardening, lots of the stuff we are taught and hand-outs we are given is at the Oregon State University agricultural extension service online site, in their regular horticulture and master gardener's sections. It's really great the quality of speakers and materials we get.

I still have a tag, I think, for the brussels sprouts somewhere. I got a six-pack, and gophers ate two of them at my home, leaving me with one in a pot and three under hoops at the neighbor's garden. I will take a look next time I'm down there, but I think it is the red one you most commonly see advertised in seed catalogs. Will check to confirm.

I don't recall -- have you tried growing under row cover or hoops during winter before?

Last year there were so many posts on this forum about bugs and slugs getting into uncovered beds and eating cole crops, and I saw it confirmed so many times elsewhere how bad it could get, that I decided to only grow cole crops under cover. I live in a pretty buggy area with lots of other critters trying to get our garden crops too, so I figure why take chances. The guy who is growing in the same neighbor's garden that I am had first his broccoli heads go missing, then almost every single stalk on his plants! Rabbits, he thinks. But I worry more about the different types of cabbage moths and cabbage-loving caterpillars, which I understand row covers and hoop houses are super-duper at keeping out. (If the wind doesn't blow the covers off!)

Maybe you could try growing your brussels sprouts under covers too? Not only might it keep out bugs and varmints, but it will definitely make for a milder winter on them, and by keeping the temperature and sun exposure more regular whether it's hot or cold, you can moderate the effects of both winter and summer and maybe extend your season(s) on both ends.

That might even let you grow your cole crops longer before they bolt on you. This is the first time I've ever grown cole crops, but it seems from my reading here that they go from doing fine to bolting very quickly! A little bit of insurance with row covers or hoops might be just the thing? I'm really enjoying my own experiment so far, and looking to extend it so I can keep learning more.

With the PVC and the rebar to hold it and the row cover, I think I spent about $20 per 8 x 2+ foot hoop bed. I think I'll be able to justify the cost pretty quickly, by getting use out of my beds in winter instead of just letting them idle.

We used to live in Bedfordshire, the area in England that grew some of the best  Brussel sprouts, and the sprouts were not harvested until  the fall when they had been frosted over which made them taste their best. They were picked all during the winter until the spring when they started to rot and then stank to high heaven until the fields were cleared..

I must admit they were not my favourite vegetable then but I like them now as there are better ways to cook them and we know not to boil them to death and throw the water away.  That seemed to be the way that they were cooked when I was tiny.. No wonder I did not care for them.

The are at the top of the list for cruciferous veggies.

I am not shure that Brussel sprouts would benifit being grown under covers, but perhaps they would in deep cold and snow. I look forward to hearing of your results.

Marc Yes we do  have a couple beds with taller hoops, its convincing hubby to grow them in those beds is another story as he thinks its a waist of space LOL   mostly because he hates Brussels sprouts, and we have tried growing them for a couple years now with out a bite   

I think now that we are going to have chickens and we are going to grow food for them.....I can get in a few Brussels sprouts in our Fall/winter covered bed....because we both agreed if they get infested or they don't grow to well for eaten ....the chickens will still benefit from growing them....that is one relief we are going to get from having chickens.....it wont hurt so much when something doesn't work out well....cause them chickens will love it!

p.s. we made a huge mistake this fall/winter in our cole crop covered bed....we took the cover off after it got cold and the cabbage moth was asleep for the winter....but....the rats and opossums were not and they ate off each and every head of broccoli and cauliflower   lesson learned!

happy gardening
rose

This poor Brussel's sprout had his first birthday.  It's 6-7" tall and I planted the seed February 15, 2013!!

I'm going to give up on them.  But we still love eating them.

Wow, why do you think it's only that big after a whole year?

I don't know why it is so small. Every time I think about throwing it away, it gets a few more buds. It's almost my garden pet. The 4 I planted last fall are so puny, still look like 2" seedlings. That's okay, I have other things germinating that will go in the BS box. Plus one cabbage to try again. At least I can eat the outer leaves off a cabbage.

My dwarfish stuff tends to be so from lack of sun more than anything else. Is yours getting enough sunlight? If it went all through summer and now through most of winter and is still growing, at least you know it's a tough little sucker.

If I may offer some advice...take the wood chips off the mix. The wood is probably tying up nitrogen in the upper most level of mix which is starving the plant. BS have quite shallow roots and have been known to topple over because of it... Then feed it with a light sprinkle of dried blood from the stalk out about 6"-8" either side. Water it and give it a week or two to see results.

Time to start new BS Plants.

http://www.mastergardenerssandiego.org/guides/index.php?season=2&ID=5&tab=1

http://organicgardening.about.com/od/howtogrowveggies/a/How-To-Grow-Organic-Brussels-Sprouts-In-Your-Garden.htm

Marc, plenty of sun since it is in a pot and I can move it to follow the sun.

Camp, I will try that. What, a half teaspoon? I needed the mulch for the summer. I got to thinking, recently, that maybe I need to sprinkle some composted cow manure on the MM before I add the mulch.

sanderson wrote:Marc,  plenty of sun since it is in a pot and I can move it to follow the sun.

Camp,  I will try that.  What, a half teaspoon?  I needed the mulch for the summer.  I got to thinking, recently, that maybe I need to sprinkle some composted cow manure on the MM before I add the mulch.

You will probably need more than a tsp. Just give it a light sprinkle around the plant base. The plants require nitrogen to make foliage so don't starve the plants . Mulching is essential for moisture retention and keeping the soil cool. The wood chips can be replaced with shredded bark, chopped leaves, straw or several inches of compost, all of which are going to tie up less nitrogen than the wood.