SHCHG

PRESENTED

The 2023 Columbia County Home & Garden Show

The Chronicle and The Chief are excited to welcome you to the 2023 Columbia County Home & Garden Show.

We are happy to announce that this year’s show has many familiar and local favorite businesses returning to the Columbia County Fairgrounds Pavilion May 20 and 21.

The Home & Garden Show is one of Columbia County’s biggest family-oriented events of the year.

This weekend you will see a number of quality businesses and exhibits representing everything

from master gardeners, landscaping, home furnishings, and more.

The fun gets underway Saturday, May 20, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and continues Sunday, May 21, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The show takes place inside the Columbia County Fairgrounds Pavilion, 58892 Saulser Road in St. Helens. Parking is free. Admission is $3 at the door or bring in three cans of non-perishable foods for free entry, to be donated to the Columbia Pacific Food Bank. Stop by with your family and friends and enjoy the relaxed at-

mosphere of the Home & Garden Show while strolling from booth to booth to see what each vendor has to offer. Each vendor has unique products to help you complete your home improvements to-do-list. For procrastinators, get started with your gardening goals or that home project that continuously eludes you.

The friendly businesses are ready and willing to provide their expert advice.

The 2023 Columbia Home & Garden Show puts you in touch with local businesses while

Equipment Rentals|Party Rentals|U-Haul rentals

Here at Don’s Rental & The Party Peddler, we take pride in offering the best selection we can at reasonable prices. We’ve been serving the St. Helens, Scappoose, and South Columbia County area since 1967.

We have an extensive selection of rental equipment to help homeowners and contractors get their job done quickly and easily. We also offer a great variety of party equipment from tables and chairs, to tents, staging, barbeques, and much more.

Our equipment is heavy-duty, designed to get your job done as efficiently as possible, and professionally maintained by our experienced staff. We offer delivery and pickup services for those larger pieces of equipment. We look forward to helping with your next project, job, or party!

offering a wide variety of high-quality products and services. And don’t forget to enter-to-win a specially designed gift basket at The Chronicle and The Chief’s booth.

In this special presentation, we’ve included gardening columns written by our gardening expert, Chip Bubl, and photos of the 2022 Home & Garden Show for your enjoyment.

We look forward to seeing you at the 2023 Columbia County Home & Garden Show!

David Thornberry Publisher

Gift basket raffle

Visit the Chronicle & The Chief booth and enter to win the Home & Garden Gift Basket! Winner is drawn on Sunday and must be able to pick up the basket at the show or at The Chronicle office.

Jeremy C. Ruark Regional Executive Editor

Will Lohre Associate Editor

Jon Campbell Marketing Consultant

James Yang Graphic Artist

Kelli Nicholson Office Manager

Jon Lowrance Driver

Exhibitors

Barbara Noce

Bath Planet

Becki Bozart

Columbia Health & Safety

Columbia River PUD

Don’s Rental

Fat Dog Farms

High Performance Homes

Hildaberry Permaculture Farm & Nursery

Jacuzzi Bath Remodel of Portland

LeafFilter

Leafguard of Oregon

OSU Master Gardeners

PELLA

Renewal by Anderson

Spring Water Farm

Suzi’s Quilt Creations

Sweet Betty’s Sweets

Swine & Cheese

The Chronicle & The Chief

The Home Depot

Vacuity Tech Corp

Young Living Essential Oils

The 2022 Home & Garden Show

Volunteer educators and neighbors serving their community with solid training in science-based, sustainable gardening and a love of lifelong learning.

OSU Extension Master Gardeners

The following are photos from the 2022 Home & Garden Show. Photos by Jeremy C. Ruark and Kelli Nicholson &

Presented by

Starting a Garden

CHIP BUBL Guest Column

If you haven’t grown a garden recently, or ever, try one this year. Even a 10 x 10 foot garden can produce an amazing amount of fresh food. You can have lots of green beans, abundant tomatoes, perfect peppers, and lots of greens like lettuce, chard, kale and others to make your home cooking shine. If you want to try a larger garden, consider one 20 x 20 feet which at 400 square feet gives you a lot more space to grow for both the summer and winter storage. You could plant more tomatoes to can or freeze, grow wonderful winter squash like the Butternut that can last six months or more, and have left over kale, cabbage, lettuce and chard to take you into December. Is it time to start your garden if you are starting from scratch? Maybe, but the soils are a little soggy yet. If the area is currently covered with grass, it might be worthwhile to cover the area with a tarp or black plastic to weaken and perhaps kill some of the grass. This would need to be started right away. Leave it on until mid- May. Then check how wet the soil is and decide whether it is ready to spade up or roto-till. If the dirt can be squished in your hand into a ball that doesn’t easily come apart, it is too wet. Be patient. Working soil that hasn’t yet drained enough will produce

clods that can haunt you for years. You don’t want that!

Your vegetables will need some nitrogen fertilizer to get rolling. About one-third of a pound per 100 square feet should be enough. To calculate for the fertilizer type you use (organic or conventional) look at the first number on the bag. That is the percentage nitrogen in that fertilizer. Take the number of pounds needed per 100 square feet (one-half pound) and divide it by the percentage on the bag. So if it is .33/.16 = about 2 pounds of the fertilizer per 100 square feet. If the first number is 7, it would be .33/.07 = about 5 pounds of that fertilizer in the same area. See, it isn’t that hard. Sprinkle the fertilizer evenly over the soil before you till. You can judge how much by remembering that “a pint is a pound the world around”. It is a rough guide. So the two pounds in the first example would equal two pints sprinkled on a 100 square foot area.

Once the soil is tilled, you are ready to plant. So, seeds or transplants, or both? I do like transplants for tomatoes, peppers, and even early season lettuce. Direct seeded

crops include lettuce, kale, chard, green beans, corn, cabbage, broccoli, both summer and winter squash, and quite a few others. Try to plant as the weather is warming, if possible. It makes seeds germinate so much faster. Cover seed lightly with a mix of sand and potting soil that keep the garden soil from “crusting”. This can be a problem with small seeds like lettuce, carrots, and beets. I have found that even large seeds benefit from that mix to cover them.

Then, as the seeds are coming up, you have to spend the time to weed around your vulnerable seedlings. Weeds are crafty. Their seeds germinate faster that most of your crop seeds. They grow faster too and start to shade your seedlings! Seedlings without sun are like fish thrown out of water. They are doomed. So the first three weeks you weed after you seed is the most important time you will spend in the garden. If you get your vegetables off to a good start, they will produce well for you. You will need to thin some of your planted vegetables so that they don’t compete with each other too much.

For experienced gardeners, please grow extra rows for your friends that may need it and for the Food Bank. It can make life so much better for people working hard to get back on their feet.

If you want some great practical gardening informa-

tion, see Grow Your Own, an Oregon State University publication you can find online at https://extension.oregonstate. edu/sites/default/files/catalog/ auto/EM9027.pdf. If you have questions, please feel free to email me at chip.bubl@ oregonstate.edu or call and leave a message for me at 503-397-3462.

Intensive vegetable planting

Vegetable gardens grown in beds, raised or not, lead gardeners to plant more intensively. This practice can yield more produce per square foot and can help in the battle against weeds by shading them out.

However, lettuce seedlings or transplants can stunt each other if each plant is not given sufficient room to grow. The rule in the plant kingdom is the plant that gets more light, wins. That “winner” plant will be able to grow deeper roots and more leaves of larger size.

A leaf lettuce bed planted at a 4”x4” spacing will not yield anywhere near as much leaf to eat as the same square footage plants at 6”x6”. Gardeners should aim for mature plants that just touch when they reach their mature size. Planting with this precise spacing is easy with transplants, less easy when you direct seed. But it is possible. You must plant enough seed (all seeds will not make it) and then thin aggressively to get the right

spacing. You must thin even if it feels wrong, wasteful, or painful. The following table gives some spacing guidelines for intensive plantings:

Beans (bush)

Beets

Broccoli

Carrots

Chard

Corn

Lettuce (leaf)

Lettuce (head)

Onions

Peppers

Potatoes

Tomatoes (staked)

Bee wise

What’s the value of a bumblebee? One estimate of the value of pollination provided by native bees is four to six billion dollars per year! And the pollinators work long hours for free. However, many studies show declining numbers of native bees and other pollinators.

So what should a sustainable gardener do? Pollinators need two things that we can provide in our gardens – flowers for nectar and pollen and a place to nest.

The first is a natural for gardeners. Even if you are primarily a vegetable gardener, there’s always room to include some flowers around your plantings. And the kind of flower is important, too.

Native bees evolved with

native plants, so plant natives as your first choice. And what a wealth of plants to choose from. Herbaceous plants include California poppy, columbine, Oregon and Douglas iris, bleeding heart, and asters.

Woody natives abound, including red flowering currant, oceanspray, salal, red huckleberry, and Pacific ninebark. There are some good ornamental flowers, as well, including; basil, lavender, mint, coneflower and rosemary.

But, if you’re planting for the bees, avoid many of the popular and beautiful, but highly modified flowers. Many of our most popular ornamentals today are double flowers (or more), which are nice to look at, but all those extra petals aren’t so good for the bees. The double flower mutations usually cause the male parts of the flowers, the part that makes pollen, to develop into petals instead. The old dahlia variety, Japanese Bishop, is avidly visited by bumblebees but other more complex dahlia types are not. So think simple flowers for the bees.

We can assist bees with their second big need as well – nesting sites. Bees make nests to create and provision brood cells. In the wild, bees use bare ground, dead trees, and untidy tangles of rough grass, all the places we tidy gardeners want to clean up.

Continued on Page 7

So, help them out by building some nest sites such as nesting blocks for mason bees. About 70% of the native bees nest in the ground, so keep some bare or partially vegetated ground.

Interested in doing more?

Here are a couple of good sources of information. The Xerces Society (www.xerces. org) has a mission to protect wildlife through conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. Pollinator conservation is an important focus for them and they have a ton of information you can use.

Finally, one of the most important urban flowers for early season pollinators are true dandelions (the ones without the hairy leaves). So put off killing that wonderful weed. Lightly edited by Chip Bubl from Robert Reynolds, former OSU Extension Service faculty member.

Berries for your garden

Berries are a great addition to any garden, if you can keep the deer and birds away. The table gives you some indication of berry productivity at full maturity.

You can expect some production from immature plantings.

Weed control and irrigation are important to getting each of these crops established. With the exception of strawberries, the spacing between rows is generally about eight feet which can be reduced somewhat if space is at a premium. These fruits need sun so if your garden is

shaded or you plant too close together, production can fall off.

Strawberries are the shortest-lived of all these fruits. Most strawberry plantings don’t last more than three or four years. Raspberries can produce over many years, if they don’t get root rot. Sadly, many times they do. The “ever-bearing” types seem, in general to be a bit more resistant to root diseases. Some farmers are planting raspberries on wide berms or raised beds to keep their roots a little bit above the winter saturated water tables in heavier clay soils. The other fruits should produce over many years once established.

Alternate bearing apples

Some apple trees have big crops followed by small crops. This is called alternate bearing. King, Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, Empire, and Fuji can be alternate bearers as can a number of other apple varieties. Weather can also play a role in fruit set. Rain during pollination can reduce fruit set as can frosts during blossom time and both will set up an alternate bearing pattern.

Fruit (floral) buds of most

hardy fruit trees are set during the previous summer, and an especially heavy crop one year may prevent adequate bud formation for the following year. This is the result of plant growth regulators (aka hormones) being sent from the seed of this year’s fruits to the buds that will produce the flowers for next year’s fruit. Alternate bearing is difficult to alter or correct. However, it is possible to return to normal yearly fruit production by early and heavy thinning during the year in which the trees are producing their large yield. Thirty to 40 healthy leaves per apple are needed to produce good quality fruit; within 30 days after bloom, thin to leave only four to seven fruit per yard along the branches.

Strong spurs also reduce alternate bearing. Good light penetration through the canopy will improve spur quality.

Why won’t my plant bloom?

When plants don’t bloom there could be several possible causes. First, they are in the wrong place, usually one too shady. Second, a frost nipped

viding get bulbs large enough to bloom; foliage cut right after flowering before the bulbs can replenish their reserves;

Lilac: Not enough sun; some varieties take a long time (10+ years) to flower; summer, fall, or winter pruning removed flower buds (prune after blooming).

vegetative growth vs. floral buds; not enough sun; excessive pruning in the summer.

Those clever brassicas

the blooms before they fully opened. Third, the plant is still vegetative. This is a problem on some woody plants that require a certain age before they will start flowering. Heavy pruning slows that maturation process. Fourth, pruning at the wrong time removed floral buds.

Don’t confuse failure to bloom with failure to set fruit. An apple tree may bloom vigorously yet not get flowers pollinated due to poor pollination weather (poor bee activity, late frost, wet-weather diseases). Here are common problems:

Daffodils: Bulbs need di-

Dogwood: Not enough sun; tree is an un-grafted seedling which means it will take longer to bloom; pruning in summer/fall; previous summer very dry.

Peony: Not enough sun; planted too deeply; botrytis blight killed flower buds.

Tulips: A warm winter; bulbs too small to bloom; mice ate the bulbs; poor drainage; not enough sun; bulbs are too old and should be replaced; various diseases.

Wisteria: Vine is a seedling and not grafted – it may take years to bloom; fertilizing with nitrogen that stimulates

Brassicas (the cabbage family), are a heavily bred vegetable over their 3-5000 years of domestication. Two modified broccoli types are gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and rapini (aka Italian broccoli raab). Both feature thick, edible stems, pungent/sweet leaves and modest floral structures. They are about one-third the size of a broccoli plant. They can be sown now in seed flats or direct seeded where you can keep them somewhat warm. Neither likes the intense heat of the mid-summer. Plant spacing is 6-8 inches within the row and rows about 12 inches apart. They mature in about 45-60 days depending on variety. For both rapini and gai lan, there are a lot of varieties to choose from. Both are excellent in stir fry, pasta dishes, and soups. Harvested plants keep well in the refrigerator for some time.

2023 Columbia County Home & Garden Show Vendor

Maggots and covering crops

CHIP BUBL Guest Column

The seedcorn maggot can be a real problem with bean, corn, and squash family seeds.

You will almost never see the fly but may, if you dig into the seed row in time, may see the white maggots. By the time the gardener realizes that something is wrong and looks in

the seed furrow, the damage is already done. The maggot and seed alike may have disappeared. Some recent experiments in the Midwest demonstrated that soil temperatures played a major role in the degree of damage. At soil temperatures below 64 degrees, seed destruction increased significantly. It will pay the gardener to wait until the soil is well-warmed to plant these crops or to warm the soil with clear plastic for 3-5 days before planting and to keep the plastic in place if conditions are overcast until the seeds start to emerge. A soil thermometer can be a useful investment. Why are crows sometimes seen chasing owls during daylight hours?

A roosting crow is quite vulnerable to night predation by owls, so crows certainly view them with a jaundiced

eye. When an owl is flushed from its roost during daylight hours, the crows see it as a threat and gang up to scare it away. The owl is no good at aerial combat and so will flee the irritated crows. But will the owl will have the last word?

This may sound obvious, but don’t buy bedding plants that have wilted and been revived. How do you know if your particular flat has wilted? You don’t. But if you see others wilted, it is a reasonable assumption that overall care and maintenance is not up to snuff. Wilted plants will never perform as well as ones that have not had their growth checked.

Will cover crops put nitrogen back into the soil?

Without a doubt, the answer is yes. However, much

of the nitrogen from cover crops turned under in the spring may not be available to the garden until midsummer. Thus, the gardener will have to supply enough nitrogen in an available form to get the vegetables and flowers off to a good start. I probably don’t have to remind you that nitrogen deficiencies are the most common nutrient issue that I see in home gardens. Some gardeners and

farmers are experimenting with alyssum as a summer cover crop for certain transplanted vegetables, especially cabbage family plants like broccoli. The alyssum isn’t extremely competitive, and it is very attractive to predatory insects (“beneficials”) that may help to control aphids and other insect pests. In addition, it may help to reduce weed growth.

Have questions?

If you have questions on any of these topics or other home garden and/ or farm questions, please contact Chip Bubl, Oregon State University Extension office in St. Helens at 503397-3462 or at chip.bubl@ oregonstate.edu. The office is open from 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Free newsletter

The Oregon State University Extension office in Columbia County publishes a monthly newsletter on gardening and farming topics (called County Living) written/edited by yours truly. All you need to do is ask for it and it will be mailed or emailed to you. Call 503397-3462 to be put on the list. Alternatively, you can find it on the web at http:// extension.oregonstate.edu/ columbia/ and click on newsletters.

Contact resources

Oregon State University Extension Service – Columbia County

505 N. Columbia River Highway

St. Helens, OR 97051 503-397-3462

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• Insects and pests

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Encouraging lady beetles and dealing with hungry crows

CHIP BUBL

Guest Column

Research shows that purchased lady beetles fly a considerable distance after release. They are gathered in the Sierra Mountains of California and kept cold. In their native locale, they are primed, when the temperatures warm, to fly ~40 miles to where the aphids are in the San Joaquin valley. We think they largely do that here as well once released.

Several studies show that lady beetles can be attracted by several methods: they are attracted to tubes painted chrome yellow and mounted around the garden; sugar solutions sprayed on plants (about one-half cup of sugar dissolved in a quart of water) encourage them; and flowers that produce lots of pollen and nectar, such as angelica, catnip, yarrow, marigolds, roses, dahlias, daisies, aster, and dill are attractive to the adult lady beetles.

Crows love corn, bean, squash, and pea seeds

Corn-eating crows periodically challenge rural Columbia County gardeners. If crows have lived around your garden for very long, they watch for you to plant. The most curious of them will poke their beaks into the soil to find the kernels the day you plant. They have quite an ability to locate seeds with few false stabs. Other crows wait until seedlings emerge and methodically remove the new green shoots and what is left of the seeds. It is apparently considered to be the height of gourmet dining in the crow world. They are fond of most large seeds and even have pulled up my garlic cloves in the fall to see if they would fit into their diet.

So what can a gardener do? One dubious solution is to plant lots of seed and hope the crows leave you a few. Sometimes that works and some-

times it doesn’t and in corn challenged cool summers, losing growing weeks to crows isn’t helpful. If you don’t grow huge blocks of corn, covering the newly planted seeds with row (crow) covers is very effective. It will speed corn emergence and then, when seedlings are 4 inches tall, the cover can be safely removed. Crow confusion and possible therapy ensues.

One old technique is to soak corn seed in turpentine overnight or kerosene more briefly and then plant. A few gardeners tell me that it really works and there is no impact on the corn itself. It must taste bad to the crows.

I can’t recommend this technique since it has never been tested to see if there are any adverse consequences, especially with the supersweet corn varieties that we have now. One very odd old technique from back when more people had horses and apparently much more time,

was to drill tiny holes in some corn seed and tie a large loop of horse hair in each kernel. Then plant these seeds about a week before you really planned to plant. According to old texts, crows would gag on the horsehair and thus be conditioned to avoid your corn when you really plant.

Apples near full bloom

After a very poor fruit set last year due to cold weather, there are a lot of blooms this year. It is normal for apple trees to bounce back with a big crop, weather permitting, after a small one the previous year. And the weather looks like it will be better for pollination this year. The mason and honey bees are getting active.

The trees could set a big fruit crop, in some cases, much more than the trees can carry. A heavy fruit load can break limbs. That is one reason why we thin. Thinning

will also produce larger fruit and the practice will tend to even out the fruit set from year to year.

Thinning should be done about a month after fruit set, which this year, looks like late May into early June. It would also be the time to start treating for codling moth and the apple maggot. Products containing “spinosad” are the best bet for home gardeners and some formulations are considered organic. Monterey Garden Insect Control and Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew are the most widely available for home gardeners.

Food preservation

You can get up-to –date and accurate answers to your food preservation questions by calling our office at 503397-3462 and ask to speak to Jenny Rudolph. She also does pressure gauge testing. You may need to leave the canner top with the gauge for several

days since her days in the office are limited and do vary from week to week.

Important notes

• The OSU Extension Office is fully open from 8 a.m.- 5 p.m.

• Donate extra garden produce and/or money to the food bank, senior centers, or community meals programs. It always is greatly appreciated.

• The Extension Service offers its programs and materials equally to all people.

Have questions?

If you have questions on any of these topics or other home garden and/or farm questions, please contact Chip Bubl, Oregon State University Extension office in St. Helens at 503-397-3462 or at chip. bubl@oregonstate.edu. The office is open from 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

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How to Backyard Big, Even in Small Spaces

Backyarding is the practice of taking everyday activities – think entertaining, eating, working, and working out to name a few – into the green space around us. Even those living in an urban setting with a smaller yard – or no yard at all – can enjoy the benefits of backyarding, according to the TurfMutt Foundation, which advocates for the care and use of yards, parks, and community green spaces.

“Thanks to smaller yards, community parks, and neighborhood green space, backyarding big even in small spaces is possible,” says Kris Kiser, president & CEO of the TurfMutt Foundation. “It takes a little planning and adopting what we like to call a ‘master backyarder’ mindset.”

This is terrific news since a recent survey conducted for the TurfMutt Foundation by The Harris Poll indicates that backyarding is increasingly important to Americans. More than three-quarters of Ameri-

cans who have a yard (76%) say the family yard space is one of the most important parts of their home, according to the poll. Additionally, nearly a quarter of Americans who have a yard (24%) say they spend more time in their yards now than before 2020.

The TurfMutt Foundation offers this advice for getting outside and enjoying green space when you have a small yard…or no yard at all.

Plant with purpose

Plan carefully and creatively to utilize every square inch of living landscape real estate in support of your lifestyle. Need a place for your pet to do her business? Plant a small patch of grass. Long to take work outside? Set up a table in an under-utilized side yard (complete with a living landscape backdrop, of course) that can double as an outdoor dining area. Love nature? Plant a butterfly bush.

Use plants to create privacy

Rather than putting up a fence in a small yard, consider a “living wall” of trees or shrubs. It will make your outdoor space feel bigger and offer support to backyard wildlife and insects. Win, win!

Go vertical

Don’t forget to incorporate vertical space into your planting plans. You can hang flower baskets on your fence or railing. A trellis laced with living vines is a gorgeous focal point. Green walls are all the rage and utilize blank wall space to create a living landscape feature.

Utilize balconies & patios

Even if you don’t have grass or any soil to plant in, you can utilize containers to plant flowers, herbs, and even fruit and vegetables. There are

also many planters available that attach to balcony railings.

Remember right plant, right place

Selecting the right plants for your lifestyle and climate is key to mastering a small backyard space. Consult the US Plant Hardiness Zone Map for help selecting the best plants for your microclimate. This will not only ensure you end up with plants that will thrive with minimal upkeep, they will also be best for supporting local pollinators.

Enjoy community green space

Take your kids to the park for a study session. Walk the dog through the community green space at the end of your road. Plan a doggie playdate at the local dog park. These are all wonderful places to get a dose of Vitamin N(ature).

For more information, sign

up for Mutt Mail, a monthly e-newsletter with backyarding tips and all the news from the TurfMutt Foundation here. To learn more about creating the yard of your dreams, visit TurfMutt.com. Look for Mulligan the TurfMutt on the CBS Lucky Dog television show. Here is a link to the International Backyarding Fact Book, to learn why spending time in our yards and community parks is good for us…and the planet.

About the TurfMutt Foundation

TurfMutt was created by the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute’s (OPEI) TurfMutt Foundation and has reached more than 70 million children, educators and families since 2009. Championed by Foundation spokesdog, Mulligan the TurfMutt, and through education partners such as Weekly Reader, Discovery Education and Scholastic, TurfMutt has

taught students and teachers how to “save the planet, one yard at a time.”

Today, TurfMutt is an official USGBC® Education Partner and part of their global LEARNING LAB. TurfMutt has been an education resource at the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Green Apple, the Center for Green Schools, the Outdoors Alliance for Kids, the National Energy Education Development (NEED) project, Climate Change Live, Petfinder and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2017, the TurfMutt animated video series won the coveted Cynopsis Kids Imagination Award for Best Interstitial Series.

TurfMutt’s personal, home habitat was featured in the 2017-2020 Wildlife Habitat Council calendars. More information at TurfMutt.com.