Late Summer/Fall (Good Good Night Garden)

Our garden year concludes in late September. We were in the garden harvesting seeds in late August and in September. By late October it was time for garden clean up. I have to say, 2025 flew by for all of us! We had a good year, even after the bunny disaster in the spring. I will let the photos tell the rest of the story.

Looking around the garden in late summer you can see signs that fall is on the way. Seed heads begin to form on the vegetables and flowers, and leaves begin to die back. Resident insects are fat and happy (though sometimes a bit creepy!). Rose hips develop and ripen in September. They will be food for the birds during the winter. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

The pale yellow hollyhocks did well in the flower garden. We watched it bloom and develop seeds heads in the fall for collecting.

The vegetables did well enough. We managed to collect seeds from the pumpkins and cucumbers. Based on this year’s crops we will make a few changes for next year.

Our crew had a lot of fun this year. I am not sure about the rest of them, but collecting seeds is one of my favorite activities during the year. It’s a good way to measure our success and look forward to next year.

Our last day in the garden was productive. We collected what seeds were left after the rains had begun, then cleared the beds. We covered the vegetable beds with burlap, and moved the bean teepee to a more sunny location at the end of the garden. We had some problems with the scarlet runner beans this year. Between the hungry rabbits and too much shade it was decided to make a change. In the flower bed I cut down the plants and laid the cuttings back on top to help suppress weeds, and self-sow some seeds for next year. ( it’s a simple task to weed and/or relocated seedlings in the spring)

Good night garden, and goodbye for now. We will be back in the new year. Thank you for reading my stories. *Sharon

Mid-Summer – Already??

Don’t blink – here we are, halfway through summer! It’s been a relatively cool summer so far this year with some rain this week, but the weatherman promises a heatwave in our future.

Today I have just a few photos showing the progress in the garden. It really looks like summer, doesn’t it?

The chicken wire we placed has made a big difference. The calendula has grown leaps and bounds, and the Cleome are tall and blooming brightly to welcome visitors.

The Kitchen Garden is busy growing as well. We have radish making seed pods, more cheerful calendula attracting pollinators for us, and the tomatoes are getting comfy in their twig supports. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

Old fashioned Hollyhocks and roses are blooming in the rose garden. The rose is a China Rose, a precursor to the hybrid tea roses you have in your garden today.

Do you grow sunflowers? The leaves below have been damaged by goldfinches visiting the garden. The damage they leave behind seems mysterious if you don’t happen to see the birds in action – it’s one of the puzzling questions that we often get this time of year!

It’s time to say goodnight ~ I am looking forward to the remaining days of summer. Heat wave or rain showers, I know every day will be beautiful in our gardens. *Sharon

Summer 2025 Begins! (a photo story)

Right on time – summer began in the Pacific Northwest and the garden responded with lovely blooms, seed heads, and fresh buds. And we spotted some beneficial insects too! *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

The onions blooming attract the necessary honey bees. Pollination ensures seeds in the fall and new plants in the spring.

The vegetables are growing! Squash, peppers, pumpkin and onion seeds.

Cardoon, Bergamot, and Calendula – oh my!

I look forward to sharing our gardens progress with you again this year – stay tuned for more photos! *Sharon

*To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

Pruning Heirloom Roses

Hello – at our workday this week we tackled early summer pruning on the heirloom roses. The pruning cycle for this type of rose is a bit different than for our modern hybrid tea roses – or any modern rose for that matter.

As a refresher, once-blooming roses bloom on old wood. To clarify, they bloom on wood from the previous season. Because of this it’s important to prune the roses soon after they bloom. These types of roses are very vigorous and can put on a LOT of new wood in the summer. Since the plants continue to grown during the summer most of what is pruned will grow back. Summer pruning accomplishes two things: 1) keeps the size of the rose in check 2) ensures healthy stem/cane renewal for plenty of blooms next year.

We generally hard prune only a few of the roses in the garden. The Old Cardinal can get very large and outgrow the support we have it growing in. As the canes grow from the center of the plant they flop over with their own weight, creating even more canes.¹ This process can create quite a tangle if left unchecked. Silver Moon & Multiflora Carnea are also hard pruned once a year. For us this is usually in February, as we have had good success using this cycle. Most of our moss roses also benefit from a hard pruning in early summer to keep them looking their best. Shailers White moss can get quite leggy without a pruning, as well as Henri Martin growing at the beginning of our garden. These I will prune on our next workday.

Today Kathy, Tina and I wrestled with the Old Cardinal. It has been about two years since we did a really hard prune, and he really needed it. The result is less than beautiful but it’s important to note the by the end of the summer it will be hard to tell that we took anything off.

On our next workday we will tackle the other roses in our collection, then let them just grow all summer long! I will post some updates for you so you can see our progress throughout the year. Until next time ~ *Sharon

If rose canes are positioned horizontally this will stimulate lateral shoots and buds. This also happens with other plants in your garden – for example Clematis. ↩︎

Roses in Bloom (2025)

Beginning in mid-May and continuing into June our Heirloom roses begin their annual show. This year has been very special, with lots of pinks and reds in the garden. The spring weather has been cooler than usual, which may have helped with the color saturation. Now I am going to just let the photos tell my story. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

One morning as I was inspecting the roses and taking photos I came upon a ladybug larvae making her way around one of the Centifolia blooms in search of breakfast. (there are always plenty of aphids to snack on) These little guys move fast! Taking photos with my cell phone was tricky and sometimes a bit blurry, but I thought you would enjoy the photo story. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

I hope you enjoyed this year’s rose story. The heirlooms have fleeting beauty~ soon we will begin pruning them for the long summer ahead, and in anticipation of blooms again next spring. In my garden as well as yours we are blessed to be able to enjoy our roses all spring, summer and fall thanks to the introduction of the hybrid tea rose in 1867. But it’s nice to be able to see the ancestors of our modern roses. In our garden we have one China Rose – Rosa Old Blush – she blooms alone all summer long. China roses are known for their ability to bloom multiple times in a season, a trait that was passed on to modern roses through breeding in the 1800’s. Thank you for listening to my stories. See you all next time ~ *Sharon

Spring 2025 Part II

May & June have arrived, bringing warm sunshine encouraging the seeds to sprout & the plants to grow.

May brought better weather and two workdays in the garden. We continued to plant this year’s vegetables and flowers. We have a complete list of the vegetables we planted: 2025 Vegetable Planting List – check it out! Below you will find some photos of the early May garden. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

The roses are beginning to bloom! It feels a bit early this year, but it’s always a welcome site. Here is a teaser for you. I will post more photos in a separate post of this years roses soon.

By the end of May we had most of the vegetables planted, and the supports all ready for them. Many thanks to Jane, Mike and Cindy for their functional and artistic trellises. There was some thinning done too, to give the radishes room to grow and produce seeds later in the year. It’s fun to watch the plants flower and form seed heads, and to see the progression as they ripen during the season. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

June arrived bringing with it warmer temperatures. Take a walk around the garden with me to see what’s growing and blooming in early June. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

The plants are growing, and apparently looking tasty to the wildlife we share the area with. We are beginning to have a rabbit problem. They are eating the peas, lettuce and just about all the small, tender seedlings. They even found the flower bed that I planted this year. It was surprising to see them eat the marigolds and calendula. More seeds were planted, and we made an effort to repel them – which didn’t really work. We made the decision to add chicken wire to the garden as a barrier to their mischief. We are hoping this will give our plants the time they need to grow large enough to fend off the predators. *Chicken wire was invented in 1844. While some emigrants brought livestock like chickens in coops, there is no mention of using chicken wire as a fencing material during the journey itself.

I will leave you with these final photos of our walk around the garden, taken mid-June. I will let you know how the chicken wire works and the progress of our project on my next visit with you. *Sharon

*To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

PS ~ we packaged more seeds this month, all ready to go home with you the next time you stop in the the Interpretive Center! See you again in July. *S.

Spring 2025 Part I

Spring came as expected in March, followed by April.

March brought rainy weather to our town. In mid-March we had a hands-on workshop for our 2025 Master Gardener class teaching about apple pruning. Sherry, Jane and Kirk led the talk with many interns participating. And boy to the apple trees look great now! *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

Our first workday in the garden was on April 2. It was a sunny and cool morning, perfect for taking care of the garden beds. We placed straw on the beds in late fall, and found them sprouting by early spring! Straw is supposed to act as a weed suppressant, but it didn’t work this time. We removed the straw and the weeds in preparation of the next workday. The rest of April was spent creating trellises and supports for the summer garden, cleaning the shed and pulling weeds. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

The last week of April we began to plant the vegetables and continued to work on supports for this year’s plantings. The day was sunny and full of smiles! It looks like the rain will be behind us soon. Click here for a listing of our 2025 Vegetables with planting information. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

As with every spring, we are hopeful for a good season in the garden. We look forward to each meeting, and caring for the garden. Right now our schedule is every other Wednesday so if you find yourself in the area stop in and say hi! *Sharon

Goodnight Garden

We met mid-October to clean up the beds and cover them with straw for the winter. The straw mulch should help keep the weeds down during the winter months – though we have already seen little bittercress coming up on the edges of the beds! *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

Some final photos of the flower garden before we removed the plants before spreading the straw.

Everything looks so tidy with the mulch in place! We had a full crew, talking and laughing in the garden that morning.

It’s time for us to take a rest, and let the garden sleep for the winter. We will see you in a months for some seed sorting and packaging – a nice indoor activity during the rainy Oregon months! Until then ~ Sharon

Late Summer – September 2024

Late summer is one of the sweetest times in Oregon. The plants are lush with blooms and fruits. Thoughts begin to turn to harvesting – be it vegetables, seeds or pretty late summer flowers. For us it also means meeting to begin winding things down for the year. We collect our final seeds, weed out, all spent plants, and make any minor changes that need doing. *To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information.

We harvested seeds, vegetables, and grapes. We also got caught up on the never-ending weeding and moved the Native American plants to the bed along Washington Street.

Late summer bounty – tomatoes, 4 O’Clock seeds, cheerful sunflowers and orange rose-hips on the Sweetbriar rose.

The flower garden is a success! The plants did well, but I think we need to re-think how many marigolds we put in next year. We cleaned up the roses around the bird nest from earlier in the summer and discovered an unhatched sparrow egg. Pretty in the nest, but sad too.

I am always both happy and sad to see summer ending. We had a good crew this year, and the plants did well. Next month we will have our Harvest Party and wrap up the gardens for the year. ~ see you then! Sharon

In the Garden: August Edition

August was a lovely time in the garden. The weather was warm, hot even, but not terribly so. We met for two regular workdays, and two optional workdays as well. We have also welcomed some enthusiastic Master Gardener interns to our roster this year – and put them to work taking care of the gardens! I would love to tell you more about it….. check the photos and their story below.

In early August we invited the new statewide manager for the OSU Extension Master Gardener™ Program, Dr. Leslie Madsen (Leslie), to tour our garden. We showed her around the garden, filling her in on the history of the Interpretive Center, and the multi-level mission of the project – demonstration garden, children’s education, and the historical component. Here she is pictured in front of the Sweetbriar rose arbor, and the kitchen garden in the background.

I have been taking a lot of pictures this year. Maybe the warm weather has me inspired more that usual? **To view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel. For viewing on a mobile device click i for photo information. view a slide show with captions please click on any photo for the carousel.

Zinnia’s! It’s no secret how much I love these simple flowers. This year we tried peppermint striped plants. And one lone red that migrated from my own seeds in March when I started them all under grow lights at home. We have been collecting seeds from the blooms – it will be interesting to see what next year’s flowers look like!

Collecting seeds is one of the tasks we all enjoy. We met on an extra workday in the afternoon, when the seed heads were dry enough to clip. We collected carrot, pea, marigold, radish, hollyhock, tomatoes, and calendula. The pretty red orach has a few more weeks before it’s ready for clipping.

By late summer the landscape has filled in with color, and the kitchen garden is ripe and ready to pick. Walking through the garden, we see sunflower, four o’clock, and alyssum in front of our tool shed. Earlier in the season we uncovered a sparrow nest filled with hungry babies. They have all left the nest, but one egg remains. Pretty, but sad to see. The sweetbriar rose bloomed so well this spring, she is full of orange hips this year. New this year, we have fall blooming aster. Cheerful purple flowers blend well with the yellow marigolds. We have two watermelons on our humble vine – and one has a moon on it! We usually only get the stars on the leaves and fruit. And you can see the lettuce has gone to seed, but it wasn’t quite ready for harvesting – so we wait.

We have cardoon and broom corn/sorghum growing, and have harvested some of the onions and parsnips. We like to leave some to go to seed next year.

The apple trees have had a good year. In late July we had a hands on workshop in the garden giving them some much needed TLC. Check out the Apple pruning post with photos. And Rhonda took home the faded ID signs to give them a makeover!

Cleome in the flower bed.

I will have to say that 2024 has been a very good summer for our garden. The next few weeks we will continue to harvest seeds and begin to put the garden to bed for the winter. Thank you for following along this year ~ see you again soon. Sharon