Look for new NPKS around town!

This one is on Polk.  We also just installed one on Conifer.

The Joy of Gardening Moves Indoors

December is the month to enjoy your winter garden, a warm cup of tea, and the new seed catalogs that grace your mailbox among the many holiday cards and catalogs.

Also consider starting members of the onion family like chives, leeks, onions, scallions or members of the rose family like alpine strawberries indoors with added light and heat so they will be ready to plant outside in early spring.  Ind

Or maybe you decide to start some slower-growing flowers like geraniums, snapdragons, yarrow, or violas to transplant under a cloche in late March.

Invite Wildlife into your Garden

Provide water not only for birds, but also for predatory insects.  A shallow bowl with rocks in it helps both birds and insects get a sip.  In the winter, check the water every morning and thaw it out with warm water if it freezes.

Provide shelter for wildlife.  Bird houses are lovely, but a rotten log, stump, or snag can be a home for birds and insects, too.  Don’t clean everything out of your garden over the winter; a bit of grass, a pile of rocks can be a home for insects.

Provide habitat.  Plant natives and berry shrubs in your garden along with vege-tables, herbs, and flowers.  This provides a habitat for both birds and insects.  As a bonus, the birds help you out in summer by eating pest insects.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycling and Rot in the December Garden

The 4 Rs — reduce, reuse, recycle and rot — are ways of eliminating waste which helps combat climate change by reducing  greenhouse gas emissions.  The 4Rs can also help you save money and improve your garden.  Here are some ways to use them in your yard and garden in December: 

Reduce water runoff during heavy rains. Find ways to capture rainwater and allow it to soak in slowly. Consider rain gardens, bioswales, tanks, and simple depressions that can hold water short term.  This also recharges groundwater for later use and prevents flooding downstream by slowing the flow of stormwater.  Here are a couple of fun links to explore - https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/article/188636 https://www.slideshare.net/Sotirakou964/oregon-rain-garden-guide 

Reuse your poinsettia next year by repotting and cutting back the stems in March.  See- https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/yard-and-garden-handling-christmas-trees-and-poinsettias-following-holidays 

and 

https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/start-now-get-beautiful-poinsettias-holidays for more information on how to do this.

Recycle your fireplace ash by spreading wood ashes evenly on your vegetable garden. Use no more than 1.5 pounds per 100 square feet per year. Don't use if the soil pH is greater than 7.0 or if potassium levels are excessive. 

Recycle your Christmas tree by placing it in your yard as shelter for birds and wildlife. Hang fruit slices, seed cakes or suet bags for extra food.  Alternatively, trim the boughs to use as a winter mulch.

Improve your Rot (compost) by turning it and protecting it from heavy rains, if necessary.

From Benton County Master Gardeners -

Membership meetings:  3rd Monday Oct. to May 7:00pm Benton County Extension office.

Plant sale:  May 6 at the Benton County Fairgrounds

December dreaming …

It’s a time for curling up with a great garden book, sorting through a season’s worth of garden notes and photos, turning garden produce into holiday gifts, travelling to a warmer place – or at least into a local garden center greenhouse to pick a poinsettia!  Here are some ideas to keep you happy indoors:

1.    Pick a photo or two for an unconventional horticultural holiday greeting.  

                 

Chilean Bromeliaceae Fascicularia Bicolor

variegated Alstromeria

2.    Read the story of the making of a garden.  Some oldies but goodies are We Made a Garden by Margery Fish; A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seed, by James Fenton and An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter.  All three gardened in places with enough overlap with Corvallis’s climate to make many of their experiences very relevant and very fun to read!  Or give yourself a treat and rediscover The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell, longtime garden columnist for the Washington Post.

3.    Pack jars of your sun or oven dried tomatoes or roasted peppers with olive oil, lemon peel and herbs to give as gifts. Clip rosemary and bundle with a red ribbon for a quick hostess gift, along with a rosemary-forward recipe such as this quick side dish: 1 can small white beans drained, heated with 3-4 oz. crumbled gorgonzola cheese, 1 T finely chopped fresh rosemary, or more to taste, and 2-3 T white wine or broth.

4.    Use dried flowers, seed pods and fresh evergreens to decorate your home and packages.

5.    Finally, add “Join the Corvallis Evening Garden Club” to your New Year’s Resolutions!! 

                           

                        Information at www.corvalliseveninggardenclub.org

What to do in the Garden in November

Maintenance and Clean Up

·  Save your leaves – they can decompose in place if they aren’t where they will cause dead spots in your lawn.  You can rake them up and use them as mulch or make a pile and allow them to become leaf mold (compost) which makes a lovely dark mulch in the spring.

·  This is a great time of year to add mulch or compost to your flower beds, vegetable garden, or shrub borders.

·  Winter vegetables can be protected with garden fleece or cold frames. 

·  Cover favorite tender plants to protect from frosts with bags, overturned pots, or thick mulch. 

·  Don’t apply chemical fertilizers as they will be  leached away by rain and can pollute downstream areas.

Planting and Propagation

·  Great time to plant trees and shrubs! Consider ones that supply food and shelter for birds and other native wildlife. cascara, elderberry, red flowering currant, aronia, service berry, Oregon grape, vine maple

Blue Elderberry, Sambucus caerulea

·  Plant spring-flowering bulbs.

·  Plant garlic.

Fava beans planted as a nitrogen fixing cover crop.  They are just broadcast over the soil and kept damp until their roots get well into the soil.  Usually our fall rain is sufficient for this.

Last chance to plant cover crops for soil building. You can also use a 3 inch or thicker layer of leaves, spread over the garden plot, to eliminate winter weeds, suppress early spring weeds and prevent soil compaction by rain.

Take hardwood cuttings from shrubs.

Propagate begonias from leaf cuttings.

2 small pots with the cut edge of Rex Begonia leaves buried slightly in regular potting mix and kept damp will likely sprout new roots in a couple of months.

 

Two Thoughts from the Evening Garden Club this Month

1.    TIME TO MULTIPLY YOUR PLANTS! 

While weeding (before mulching your beds for winter) look for volunteer seedlings of plants you might want and leave in place or lift and pop into a nursery bed.  (Some may need sheltering.)

It may not be too late to collect seed from overgrown veggies and later flowering plants.  Dry the seed before storing in a cool, dry place.  Old Altoids tins or paper envelopes work well – just don’t seal in plastic.  Label carefully!!  Share seed with fellow gardeners – you almost never need as much as you have.

Learn about propagation and start taking cuttings from your favorite and rare plants.   By late summer next year, you could have well-started plants to give as gifts or add to your own garden.  Here’s a great, well-reviewed book to start with:

American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Definitive Practical Guide to Culmination, Propagation, and Display 

by Alan R. Toogood, American Horticultural Society

2.    TIME TO CUT BACK, COMPOST AND TIDY UP (BUT NOT TOO MUCH!)

Leave seed heads in place as long as possible for the birds and other wildlife who use them and for the beauty of their forms in the winter landscape.

Cut off dead stalks of euphorbia.  Fresh blooms will form for spring.

Leave flowering plants with green leaves to photosynthesize until they turn brown – they’ll come back stronger in spring.  

Remove and get rid of any diseased foliage – keeping it out of the home compost bin.  (Yard waste bin is okay.)

DO NOT cut back hardy fuchsia, kniphofia or hardy cyclamen.  Wait until early spring to cut back epimedium (when you see flowers forming underneath) and ornamental grasses (when new growth is beginning.)

What to do in the Garden in November

Maintenance and Clean Up

·  Save your leaves – they can decompose in place if they aren’t where they will cause dead spots in your lawn.  You can rake them up and use them as mulch or make a pile and allow them to become leaf mold (compost) which makes a lovely dark mulch in the spring.

·  This is a great time of year to add mulch or compost to your flower beds, vegetable garden, or shrub borders.

·  Winter vegetables can be protected with heavy weight floating row cover (garden fleece in Britain) or cold frames. 

·  Cover favorite tender plants to protect from frosts with bags, overturned pots, or thick mulch. 

·  Don’t apply chemical fertilizers as they will be  leached away by rain and can pollute downstream areas.

Planting and Propagation

·  Great time to plant trees and shrubs! Consider ones that supply food and shelter for birds and other native wildlife. cascara, elderberry, red flowering currant, aronia, service berry, Oregon grape, vine maple

·  Plant spring-flowering bulbs.

·  Plant garlic.

Fava beans in Svetlana's garden

Last chance to plant cover crops for soil building. You can also use a 3 inch or thicker layer of leaves, spread over the garden plot, to eliminate winter weeds, suppress early spring weeds and prevent soil compaction by rain.

Take cuttings from shrubs; propagate begonias from leaf cuttings.

Click here for more information on taking cuttings.

Begonia leaf cutting

Happy Halloween from the NPK project!

Many thanks to all our wonderful hosts and a special thank you to Laurie for her fantastic decorating!

Master Gardener Applications Now OPEN

Applications open- October 1 to December 3 2019

Dates of classes – March 5 – June 25 2020

Click here to join -

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/mg/linn-benton/how-join

or Contact Elizabeth Records - 541-713-5012 

Harvest Solutions from the Food Action Team, Edible Garden Group

Have More Food from your Garden

than You Can Eat or Put Up?

Consider donating your surplus to one of the follow programs:

Community Outreach Inc.  865 NW Reiman Ave., Corvallis. Shelter and food pantry. 8 am-7pm Mon-Fri. Call ahead to donate • 541-758-3000 

Jackson Street Youth Shelter  555 NW Jackson Ave. 

Open 24/7. Call ahead to donate • 541-754-2404

Jammin’ for the Hungry  Fresh or frozen fruit only. 

Call for locations and times. Sara Power • 541-231-6772 

Marys River Gleaners at Pioneer Park(south of Philomath Blvd between 15th St. and downtown exit). Fri. 8 am-2:30 pm, Sat. 9:30 am-1:30 pm. Cookie Johnson • 541-497-9019 

Neighbor to Neighbor (Philomath)  College United Methodist Church (Social Hall), 1123 Main St, Philomath.  Dinner: 5:30-6:30 pm Glenda • 541-929-2412 or 541-929-6614 

OSU Emergency Food Pantry  Call ahead to donate and for directions. 541-737-3747 or 541-737-3473 

Don’t Waste Food

Forty percentof all food is wasted in the United States. Think about the energy waste that goes along with that!  What’s more, much food waste can be eliminated. 

What to Do

Food waste starts in the garden. 

·      Pick produce when it’s ready. 

·      When you bring it home, store it properly so that it doesn’t spoil. 

·      Keep an eye on what’s in the back of the fridge. 

·      Plan meals carefully to use up food before it goes bad.        

·      If you do have to toss food, put it on the compost pile or in the yard waste bin, if allowed, not in the trash. 

·      So either share food with your friends or donate it. 

More places to donate food will be posted next month.

Check out

https://nofoodleftbehindcorvallis.org

to find out more info!