Garden Chats

You are invited to the Campbell Community Garden to take a casual deep dive into timely gardening topics. We will gather in the garden to learn and ask questions about our gardens. Feel free to bring a picnic dinner, bring a folding chair or blanket and a friend. If the temperature is extremely hot, we may reschedule.

Wednesday, July 16th, July 23rd 6:30pm - INSECTS, Sarah will show you what to look for when scouting for insects, how to nurture the good ones, and how to combat the bad ones. NOTE the date change!

Wednesday, August 6th, 6:30pm - FALL & WINTER GARDENING, Sarah will share tips on how to set up your garden to grow through the winter and how to set your garden up for a successful start to spring.

Wednesday, August 20th, 6:30pm - SAVING THE HARVEST, Sarah will share her creative tips on how to save your overabundance of summer produce. 

Do you want to garden at the Campbell Community Garden? It's not too late, we have a few open gardens, sign up on our "rent a garden" tab!

Training Tomato Plants

Our tomato plants have really appreciated the recent warm weather and are starting to really grow and flower, a few even have small fruit. Tomatoes left to grow on their own tend to vine and sprawl all over the ground. Taking the time to train them to grow up onto a structure of some kind will reward us with healthier plants with fruit that can be easier to pick. Campbell Gardeners are employing several different methods of training their plants.

Traditional style tomato cages in yellow and red complement the marigolds for a pretty combination...imagine red ripe fruit in this colorful  mix!

One of our Square Foot Gardeners is trellising their tomatoes on netting and PVC pipe.

This gardener decided to try out a combination of metal T-posts and wire after figuring out the cost to outfit his large number of plants with traditional cages...I think we could name his system a "Tomato Corral"

This gardener isn't growing tomatoes sideways, it just looks that way. They are staking their plants to wood stakes and are using old pantyhose and pipe cleaners to keep them in line.

This gardener is using stakes and twine to make a cross between a cage and a trellis.

This gardener found a very attractive solution to tomato cages that want to topple over. They enclosed the cages in bamboo tee pees.

For detailed instructions on how to prune and train tomato plants, see the two videos below.
Here is a video from the University of Main Extension Service that show how to stake indeterminate tomatoes:



Here is a link  from Fine Gardening Magazine on pruning and trellising tomatoes.

Fall Gardening

A revised proposal has been submitted to the school district for the use of the Hector Campbell School grounds for a neighborhood community garden, we are waiting for their response. Ideally we would start working on the new garden this fall before the soil is too wet from winter rains; but if not, we will just have to wait until spring. Anyway, fall is a great time to learn new gardening techniques, plan for spring planing and next summers harvest, AND plant a winter garden!

Learn


Lettuce growing under plastic in January

Clackamas County Master Gardeners Fall Garden Fair: Saturday October 8th at the Milwaukie Center, 5440 SE Kellogg Creek Drive, from 9:30am to Noon. Attend "10 minute university" seminars, have your soil PH tested, and have questions answered by Master Gardeners. Click HERE for a complete schedule of the days events. And while you are there take a walk around the building and check out the Centers Community Garden beds.

Plan

Take time to think about what vegetables your family likes to eat, how much they eat, how you would prepare home grown veggies, and how you would store your harvest. Think about which plants you should grow from seed and which you should plan to buy as starts from the market. Take time to look through seed catalogs and study online resources like the OSU Extension Services results of their vegetable variety trials. 

Kale grows well through the winter.

Plant

Don't stop growing food just because summer is over! Our climate allows us to grow some things year round with just a little protection from the cold. Some edibles must be planted in the fall: October is the time to plant garlic to be harvested early next summer. See the OSU Extension publication "Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest" for a good overview of winter gardening. Most of the crops will need time to establish themselves before the real cold weather sets in, so it may be a little late to start seeds, but veggie starts can be purchased at the farmers market or at the nursery.

Growing Vegetables in Containers

If you don't have a big yard for a vegetable garden, or just want to get a little vegetable gardening in before we get a community garden plot in the neighborhood, try growing in containers.

This 10-Minute University (really almost 30 minutes) video, by Clackamas County, was filmed at the Oregon City Farmers Market. It has good tips to get you started. And here is a link to an article on growing veggies in containers from Around Town Magazine.


Master Gardener 10 Minute University-Growing Edibles in Containers from Clackamas County on Vimeo.

Here is a highlight Master Gardener, Darlene Reimer's tips from the video:

• Bigger is better than small when it comes to containers, roots need room to grow.
• Good drainage is important; containers must have drainage holes.
• Don't use garden soil in containers, use a good quality soil less mix that will drain well.
• Mix a slow-release fertilizer into the soil as you fill the pots.
• Water the plants well before planing them in the container and then water them in.
• Keep the plants watered and fertilized as the season progresses.