Country Living Provided to you by the OSU Extension Service Columbia County 505 N. Columbia River Hwy, St. Helens OR 97051 Phone: 503.397.3462 Email: [email protected] Office hours: Please call to check availability To visit links to external articles, please view this newsletter online at our Website: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/columbia/ June 2021 Programs for you . Listen to the Gardening Spot on KOHI (1600 am) radio: Every Saturday, 8:05 to 8:15 a.m. rd Columbia County Beekeepers Virtual Meeting June 3 at 6pm. “Honeybee Queen Ph eromones,” a guest presentation by Ana Heck from Michigan State University. Email for login information: [email protected] th Columbia County Household Hazardous Waste Collection Event June 12 , 8-2pm At the county transfer station: 1601 Railroad Ave in St. Helens. Next one: Aug 28th OSU Wildfire Wednesdays These online webinars continue June 2nd & 16th and past recordings are available. For more details and links to recorded webinars and resources, check the “Fire Aware. Fire Prepared.” program website. Also, be sure to read our introduction to our new Regional Fire Specialist on the back page! Farmers Markets Opening! Use the “farmers market finder” to find one near you! OSU resources & publications: https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/ Chip Bubl, OSU Extension Faculty, Agriculture Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Family and Community Health, 4-H Youth, Forestry & Natural Resources, In the garden and Extension Sea Grant programs. Oregon State University, United States Department of Agriculture, and Columbia County cooperating. The Extension Service offers its programs and materials equally to all people. Page 1 In the garden material to plant. See comments below. The bulbils will take two years to produce a good quality bulb. Talk to me if you want more Soils are really dry information on this process. During our water year from October 1 through While garlic varieties can mature at different September 30th, we normally get 43 inches of times from late June through mid-July, my sense water. At the end of May according to the is that we are ahead of things this year. National Weather Service, we stand at 28 inches for the water year in Scappoose. In a normal But now to the bad news. There are more year, June would add about 1.5 inches, with July problems with growing garlic over the last 10 at .6 inches, August with 1.1 inches, and years than I have seen in the past. The least September with 1.8 more inches. In a normal common problem is white rot. This devastating year, this would add 5 inches to our current May fungal disease has to get to your garden from total of 28 inches giving us 33 inches total for infected planting stock. Mostly, it comes with the 20-21 water year. This is about 10 inches bundled onion plants that are grown in soil in short of normal or about 75% of normal rainfall some other part of the country. If the soils have for the water year. These numbers should be white rot, it can infect your purchased proportional for other county locations. The transplants. Once put in your garden, it spreads. forecasts aren’t optimistic for reaching even You will never be able to grow an onion those numbers. It is dry and this follows several (Allium) family plant again. It is a very unkind dry springs in a row. Those of you on wells may disease. Luckily, it isn’t too common. Onion find them run short or worse. Pay attention to starts grown from seed in a greenhouse in keeping your most important plants watered and potting mix are not a risk. use mulches for water management. And start thinking about what your landscape should look like in the future if this continues. Garlic harvest…. And problems The weather has been good for garlic though, if you haven’t watered yet, you should deep water once as soon as possible. The hardneck garlic varieties are pushing out their floral stalks. These need to be removed to keep carbohydrates going to bulb growth. The most common problem is very tough but The only possibly manageable. This is another fungus reason to called Fusarium basal plate rot. It is carried allow those asymptomatically in garlic cloves. During wet bulbils to springs, especially on poorly drained ground, it form on the explodes. The bottom of the bulb rots and stalks (there shouldn’t be used for planting or cooking. is no true Commercial growers look to source stock from seed) is if eastern or central Oregon. That works most of you are having disease or mite issues and want the time but they can also have bad years. to recover some uninfected or un-infested 2 Raised beds help. Raised beds with drip Horseradish is rarely sold freshly harvested irrigation and tight-to-the-bed black plastic with since, unless kept chilled and humidified, it holes punched to plant the cloves seems almost loses quality quickly. But there are probably a miracle cure. The disease may not completely 4,000 acres grown for disappear but can be kept to a very low roots to make incidence. horseradish products. And there are many The third problem people passionate about shows up when horseradish as a beautiful garlic is condiment for harvested but during sandwiches and other drying and afterwards in dishes such that the storage, cloves and market for those whole bulbs shrivel and products is quite good. Photo of horseradish cut roots: dry up. This is caused Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison by two mite species. It Horseradish evolved and was brought into kind of snuck up on cultivation in Russia and Eastern Europe. It is everyone but is now something of an epidemic. an herbaceous perennial plant (top dies back in Treatment either at time of planting, during the the winter) that propagates both by root pieces growing year, or after harvest are unclear. This and seed. The root is the valuable part in is a problem that I have. I treated the cloves cooking and medicine. before planting last fall with sulfur dust (mites generally don’t like sulfur) and plan to sulfur The plant got the spray by the time you get this newsletter. I will English name separate out the best cloves for replanting, dust horseradish from a them with sulfur, and refrigerate them until they possible mis-translation are planted. At planting, I will dust with sulfur of the German word again. For eating garlic, we freeze the cloves meerrettich, which and bring them out as needed. They hold up means “sea radish”, well in the freezer. Research is ongoing appropriate for where it regarding cures and management. It isn’t even grew in Europe. clear what alternate hosts exist and how these Pronounce “meer” as Photo of horseradish plant: North mites spread. Maybe we will know more next “mare” and the horse Carolina State University year. So far, garlic rust, common in the jump was easy. Willamette valley, doesn’t seem to be in Columbia County much. Horseradish is in the cabbage/mustard family of edible roots (with radishes, rutabagas, turnips, Perennial vegetables: Horseradish etc.) and gets its “kick” from oils common, in varying amounts, to all members of that very Horseradish doesn’t have the broad culinary extended family. To do well, horseradish must interest as artichokes, asparagus, or even have winter. It is listed as a zone 2-9 plant. rhubarb that were covered earlier in this Freezing stimulates oil production and newsletter. Nor does it have the garden horseradish is best harvested after at least one landscape appeal of those plants since it is rather freeze, and even better after two. Frost kills the boring with escapist tendencies. leaves. In areas with dry, cold winters, the roots 3 can stay in the ground and be harvested as Horseradish is allelopathic, which means some needed. other plants aren’t comfortable around horseradish. Exudates from the plant can stunt Horseradish likes deep, rich soil with good or kill germinating seeds and slow roots that are drainage and full sun to partial shade. It will in its “zone of control”. disappear in deep shade. It is a husky plant with leaves, either smooth or wavy depending on Horseradish can spread by root pieces and seeds variety, two feet high in a rosette that can be a in gardens. Plant in one area that isn’t rotating to foot and a half wide. Typical farm spacing is 15- other plants. It can be planted in containers 24 inches between plants within a row and 30 to successfully. 36” between rows. Root pieces (3/8 to 3/4 inches wide and 8 to 14 inches long) are cut The complex chemicals are released when the with the top straight and the lower portion at an cell vacuole is punctured. Clever insects have angle so you plant them in the correct direction. found a way to get nourishment from We want no confused roots! The roots are laid horseradish without stimulating the insecticidal in a 3 to 5 inch deep furrow at a 45-degree compounds the plant produces. They know their angle. Cover the furrow and water. way around the “cells of death”. When you harvest, dig the whole plant. You will Horseradish was first viewed as a medicine long find the main root and side roots that you will before it was used in cooking. Medicinal use to replant. That said, many people just qualities that horseradish may have include anti- assume they have left root pieces when they dig cancer properties, circulatory improvement, as the big root and they are usually right.