PO Box 767 Kenai, Alaska Upcoming Program: September 13 Safely Preserving the Fall Harvest

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1 September 2016 PO Box 767 Kenai, Alaska Board Members President & Publicity Renae Wall Vice President & Newsletter Sharon Gherman Secretary & Hospitality Kay Gardner Treasurer & CIAA Beds Peggy Morris Director, Plant Sale, & Historian Cathy Haas Director & Tech Committee Don St. John Director & Programs Ron Homan Director & Special Events Lee Bowman Director & May Seminars Liz Dowler Director & Summer Tours Kathy Hobart Director & Sea Ag sale Della Bridenburg Upcoming Program: September 13 Safely Preserving the Fall Harvest Presented by Linda Tannehill Now is the time of year to harvest or purchase your locally grown carrots, cabbages, and beets. But which is the best way to preserve them for enjoyment during the winter months? Freeze, can, root cellar, dry, ferment? So many options! Come learn from Linda Tannehill, UAF Cooperative Extension Agent, as she explores the best-suited storage techniques for these vegetables. Question and answer session following the presentation. Linda is the Home, Health and Family Development agent and also the 4-H & Youth Development Agent in our local Soldotna Cooperative Extension office. She is well known to many of us, and we look forward to hearing from her! Club members are invited to bring a garden-inspired appetizer to share. Finger foods preferred; a chance to share your bounty! Date: Tues., Sept. 13th Time: 7pm Location: Cook Inlet Aquaculture Bldg., K-Beach Rd. See you at the meeting! Membership Dues are Due! Our membership year starts in September each year, so dues are now due! Membership is still the low, low price of $20 for an individual and $30 for a family. Look for the Membership Form included in this newsletter. Bring your completed form with your annual dues to the Hospitality Table at the September program, so you don t miss a thing (or mail it to CPGC, PO Box 767, Kenai, AK 99611). Benefits of Garden Club membership: receiving the Garden Club Newsletter, participation in Summer Garden Tours, and priority registration for many club events, including May Workshop Weekends. So, why put it off? Renew your registration today!

2 Page 2 Will s Ramblings Chick Weed By Will Hightower Somebody please explain to me why chickweed is so vibrant and healthy regardless of the circumstances. It is oblivious to wet or dry soil; as soon as flowers appear it seems to instantaneously drop seeds; if I leave even a tiny portion of root in the ground when weeding it magically springs back to life. An army of slug invaders in my pansy bed made a sharp detour around chickweed and instead devastated pots of marigolds stationed there to repel garden pests. Even my alpacas don t eat the stuff. Why can t my garden produce and flowers take growing lessons from chickweed? There is no justice in the gardening world! The above is Monti s lament. As you can tell, we have hit the late summer wall. We have seeded, weeded and watered all summer. By now we should be like the Romans, able to lie on the davenport, surrounded by bowls of fresh produce. Instead we are still weeding, watering and even seeding, that is if you count chick weed seed. The onions were a flop, again. Bulb onions are a challenge to me. I think that I plant them in the wrong spot. Chives, I could have forty acres of chives, but bulb onions no way. I used to have the same problem with carrots as I still do with onions, but not anymore. The last two years the carrots have been big and sweet, and best eaten right out of the garden. Cherries (Nanking Bush) and gooseberries yielded almost more than we could pick. Rhubarb - the current crop still looks good. Sugar snap peas are in good supply. Cucumbers - three plants are too many for our needs. I had never placed cucumbers on a sandwich until this year. If the lettuce is getting old and bitter, try cucumber. Thought we were in trouble when we ended up with one zucchini plant. Lucky it is a self pollinating variety. Remember that we run our garden operation as a large kitchen garden for our own use, with excess items to family and friends. Right now in the garden, there is a zucchini that is large enough to have gone to the State Fair. Hope that Monti does a stuffed zucchini tonight. The outdoor asparagus gave us a small crop this year. This is year three for the patch. A very nice yellow flower appeared in the asparagus patch, kind of like a small snapdragon. I thought the plant was very pretty, until Monti informed me that it was an invasive weed. The asparagus in the tunnel is just on its second year, but looking good, and has done a second growth. Sweet corn came through. Due to a germination problem, we had two plantings, two weeks apart. Interestingly, some stalks had NO sign of ears! We have had four meals, with more to come. But, we need to eat faster as the ears are starting to be not as sweet. Speaking of sweet, the sweet potatoes have big healthy vines. I am afraid to dig under the plant. I m not sure that I want to know what is (not) down there. The plants keep blooming, which I think is a good sign. If I don t have sweet potato something down in the ground this year, that is it for that experiment. Speaking of potatoes, I have to get myself a potato patch again. I did the potatoes in buckets this year. Last year it was shopping bags. I get potatoes, but not like the results from the raised bed boxes. Strawberries - finally got them figured out. We have always harvested strawberries, but not like this year. It has come to the point that Monti has slowed down eating fresh berries and we only have forty plants to pick from. She is talking about drying strawberries. Now folks, when she switches from fresh to dried strawberries, that is big news! There is more that I could talk about, with many ups and downs. The truth is that all Alaska gardeners work very hard at their craft for a short period each year. The old saying goes, Hope springs eternal or is it, Spring is eternal hope? Someone told me that chick weed is edible. Well, you all come on over, I have a nice green salad for you. When you come, please bring the latest seed catalog you received. I m getting fired up for the next season. Wonder how much it would cost to heat one of the tunnels this winter?

3 Page 3 Moss Gardens are Perfect for Central Peninsula Gardens By Sharon Gherman, CPGC Newsletter Editor Master Gardeners get a lot of questions from people about garden pests and problems, and one thing people want to know is how to get rid of moss. Moss is common in Central Peninsula forests and gardens, and the best way to get rid of it is to raise the ph of the soil, as moss thrives in acidic soil (of which we have an abundance!). Lime is most often recommended to rid your soil of moss, and moss on the north side of your roof can be discouraged by placing a copper strip along the ridgeline of your building (the copper strip also works by changing the ph of the rain that falls on the roof). But having grown up in a Japanese-influenced culture, moss brings to my mind cool, serene, refreshing, forest-y landscapes. I can almost smell the freshness as I write this! So I want to encourage you to re-think moss as an asset, not a problem. Is there a spot on your property where you fight moss all the time? A nice, shady place that moss seems to love? This would be a great place to develop a moss garden. There are many different types of moss just begin to notice their variety and different shades of color (mostly green, but not all). When you find an interesting type of moss that you don t have (yet) in your garden, bring a little bit home and see if it will make itself at home in your landscape. Take a look at these beautiful moss gardens as an inspiration:

4 Page 4 So let your imagination wander, and happy moss gardening! Mold and Mildew Are you noticing mold and mildew on your garden plants? Are the tomatoes in your greenhouse being destroyed by mildew before they ripen? Mildew problems are common as temperatures turn cool toward fall and our garden plants begin their slow decline at the end of their annual season. If you re like me, you may be tiring of all the work your garden requires about this time of the year. In that case, the easiest solution may be to pull up and destroy the plants and call it quits for the winter. But whether you re wisely preventing mildew from getting a foothold or mildew has shown up early in the season, there are a couple of general principles to remember: 1. Prevention is easier than treatment. Following steps 2, 3 and 4 before you notice mildew is the best treatment of all. 2. Good air circulation will help keep powdery mildew at bay. Take a large circulating fan and aim it toward the far corner of your greenhouse where it can create air circulation around the greenhouse without damaging the plants. Opening the windows and letting heat out while the fan is circulating will help to lower the humidity level inside, which also prevents mildew. 3. Eliminate the shade. Plants in the shade are more susceptible to mold and mildew. Move plants so they re not shading each other the increase in sunlight will help correct and prevent mildew. 4. Don t overfertilize. Increased nitrogen encourages mildew, so switch to a slow-release fertilizer or just quit fertilizing completely if the season is almost over. Once mildew takes hold, you have a decision to make. There are many off-the-shelf fungicides available for purchase, and most will control but not eliminate mildew. But you still need to combine the fungicide with the principles of good air circulation, more sun, and less fertilizer. If you prefer organic solutions, the most common treatment combines one tablespoon of baking soda with a teaspoon of dormant oil and a teaspoon of insecticidal or liquid soap (not detergent) to a gallon of water. Spray on plants every one to two weeks. Again, this is more likely to control than to eliminate mildew. Remove any mildewed fruits and destroy them. Avoid spraying water on mildewed leaves and fruit, as it will spread the mildew. And remember there s always next year!

5 Gardener s Latin Columbines are a good example of a time when the Latin descriptions can tip you off to unique characteristics of plants that may all be labeled with the same common name columbine, in this case: - Alpine Columbine - aquilegia alpina from alpine regions - Rocky Mountain Columbine aquilegia caerulea having blue flowers - Golden-Spurred Columbine aquilegia chrysantha golden flowered - Arizona Columbine aquilegia desertorum from the desert - (no common name) aquilegia flabellata shaped like an open fan - Western Columbine aquilegia formosa beautiful, handsome, finely formed - (no common name) aquilegia sibirica from Siberia Board Vacancy by Renae Wall, CPGC President Lee Bowman, Board Member and Special Events Chair, has resigned from the CPGC Board of Directors due to a family illness. Lee has served on the board since His steadiness and insight has greatly benefited our Club and the board. His efforts as Special Events Chair have brought many of us gardening friends together, pooling our talents to reach out to our community. And, of course, Lee s wife Julie has been equally invaluable to the Club, working behind the scenes with Lee on all his projects, including the Club s Get Ready For Spring! round-tables event, and the CPGC booth at the Kenai Peninsula Home Show. When you see them, please take a moment to thank Lee and Julie for all their service. We wish Lee and his family well, and will greatly miss Lee s leadership on the board. Lee s position will be filled by board appointment for the remainder of his term, which ends in January If you are interested, or would like to recommend someone to serve on the CPGC Board of Directors, please contact Renae Wall at wallrenae@yahoo.com, or (907)

6 CENTRAL PENINSULA GARDEN CLUB MEMBERSHIP FORM (9/01/16) **NEW RENEWAL *DATE PAID CASH CHECK # CHECKS Payable to CPGC Mail to: PO Box 767, Kenai, AK INDIVIDUAL: FULL YEAR - Sept 1 August 31 - $20 COUPLE/FAMILY: FULL YEAR - Sept 1 August 31 - $30 NAME(S) PHONE(S) ADDRESS **PLEASE PRINT in CAPS, CLEARLY and BIG (no snail mail) Member participation is important to make sure your favorite events and benefits happen every year! Please check at least one committee you would like to work on. We will contact you when the time comes! Workshops Planning Committee Video & Photograph (At programs, workshops, other events) Summer Tours (Planning and/or Hosting ) Program Planning Committee Computer & Tech (Monthly program audio/visual system, as needed) Publicity (Post flyers, Facebook, newspaper & radio announcements) Special Event Booths (Take a shift for one or two days. It s fun!) Newsletter (Write a short article about your gardening or helpful tips. Stories/pics about all levels of gardening welcome. Ad sales helpful.) Facility summer flower bed maintenance Hospitality (Meeting/event reception desk, set up & clean up) Board Member (3-yr terms, gardening experience not required) Program Topic Suggestions: