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About Wallowa County chieftain. (Enterprise, Wallowa County, Or.) 1943-current | View Entire Issue (May 27, 2015)
B2 wallowa.com May 27, 2015 Wallowa County Chieftain GROW How to GROW a LOT on a LOT By Kathleen Ellyn Wallowa County Chieftain L imited garden space? No prob- lem. There are as many ways to make it work as there are gardeners. To prove that point, we introduce two very different examples of in iefta gardening on a city lot. h C / yn , 5, n Ell Let’s begin with two en- sher a’s thlee i a F K ne andm i s by o a t l thusiastic gardeners from En- o Ph , B -gr dson s great n terprise who are making the a r i -g reat e of h g most of limited funds and a ’ d s l si oebe ly out a. tiny backyard. G y d w Pegg ds prou in Wallo Jeremy Koerperich and stan nhouse Jeff Wingo share the tiny e gre backyard of a house on 7th Street in Enterprise that is already making the PRVW HI¿FLHQW XVH RI FOR THE SEASON! space possible. Jeremy • Hardy Annuals & Perennials rents the house and Jeff • Hanging Baskets & Planters rents the mother-in-law • Custom Orders Welcome add-on. • Vegetable Starts Their garden spaces, set • Fresh Cut Flowers in Season perpendicular to each other Open Daily • 9-6 • 71845 Dougherty Loop, Wallowa in the postage-stamp-sized 541-886-7474 • 541-263-1954 backyard, measure about 8 by 12 feet each. Gift Quality Certificates “You work with what Nursery Available! Stock you’ve got,” said Jeremy. Needless to say, neither Drive a Little, Find a Lot! fellow expects to have a com- mercial garden, but since both are absolutely dedicated to growing organic and need to grow as economically as pos- sible, the two neighbors are excited about sharing their knowledge, skills and tools. Jeremy has the added ben- H¿WRIDQDUURZÀRZHUEHGWKDW runs the length of the house — half of which he discov- ered had been planted with Summer is strawberries sometime in the a great time past. He quickly ripped out to think about the grass and is planning not only a double crop of straw- heating! Ask about our cash & car discounts! berries interspaced with run- ner beans, but a “science ex- periment” as well. Also specializing in: He’s going to clone his best Jotul• Pacific Energy•Enviro•Iron Strike VWUDZEHUU\SODQWWR¿OOLQJDSV Store Hours: DQGH[WHQGKLVVWUDZEHUU\¿HOG Monday thru Saturday the length of the house. HOME & HEARTH 8am to 6pm Sunday 10am to 4pm 06 S. Main Street • Joseph, OR • 541-432-2690 “Cloning is such an easy All fuel types & venting available way to do that. It’s a nice little Blaine Fisher enjoys the garden inside his great-grandma’s greenhouse. Two Enterprise micro-gardeners, Jeff Wingo and Jeremy Koerperich pose by the shared greenhouse where their organic gardens begin. NOW OPEN Anton’s experiment,” he said. Cloning sounds pretty state-of-the-art, but it’s actual- ly something a lot of window box gardeners have already done. Most everyone knows that if you pick an African Violet leaf, soak it in water for a bit, and plant it — you get a new African Violet. It’s the same with strawber- ries, peppers, tomatoes and a host of other plants. So, Jeremy selected his best strawberry plant, cut a few leaves off at a 45-degree angle, shaved the stems just a bit to encourage root growth, dipped them in Rootblast Growth For- mula (available locally) and put them directly into the dirt. “Cloning saves me about three weeks of growing time over planting seed,” Jeremy said. “And I get exact repli- cas of my best plant instead of having to wait to see how each plant produces.” Jeff Wingo, for his part, is sharing his greenhouse space. Jeff has two greenhouses, both tiny little portable houses with zip-on plastic covers. These micro greenhouses, (19 inches long by 27 inches wide by 62 inches tall) cost about $80. Jeff uses them to start his own vegetable seeds in March — simply dragging the green- houses through the sliding glass door of his apartment at night to keep them from freez- ing and then dragging them out in the morning to make the most of the sunshine. He’s been rewarded with egg-cartons full of various vegetable starts he will soon transplant into both micro-gar- dens. He’s got spinach, basil, peppers, carrots, cabbage and zucchini sprouted already. Jeff has also kept himself in leaf lettuce by planting the core of a butter lettuce he pur- chased at the local grocery store. Leaf lettuce will contin- ue to put on new leaf from an old core for months. Celery is another plant that grows well from an old core. Both men are “organic all the way,” said Wingo, and a conversation about fertiliz- ers and soil amendments will quickly convince you that they’ve both done their home- work. Wingo favors Alaska Fish Fertilizer and BlackGold worm castings, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to have Black Gold worm castings,” he said. Blooming With Color! Mildred, Irene & Kathy • Trees & Shr bs • Annuals & Perennials • Baskets & Planters • Garden Star s • Rock & Sand • Bark • Giſt Cer ificates Nursery: 541-426-8733 LCB#7818 118 Fish Hatchery Lane • Enterprise • Open 7 days a week Across from Wallowa County Grain Growers Eastern Oregon Nursery in Island City • 541-962-0641 • Professional staff to select and install all your residential and commercial door needs • Choose from many colors and style options • Operators, residential and commercial • R-value 18 available • Serving the Tri-County area for over 21 years Koerperich favors the Fox Farm line of fertilizers includ- ing Happy Frog Multipurpose fertilizer and agrees with Win- go on the Black Gold worm castings. The Koerperich/Wingo shared garden on a city lot in Enterprise is miles away from our next city lot garden, both in distance and purpose. Our next garden is Peggy Goebel’s semi-pro garden in Wallowa. Peggy has gardened “for, oh, 20 years,” she said. But three years ago she saw son- in-law’s greenhouse and de- veloped a desire for extend- ed gardening seasons, raised beds, and the ability to share a lot more produce with others. The result has been the addition of a 20 by 30-foot greenhouse to go with a new- ly designed outdoor garden of about the same square footage. 3HJJ\¿OOHGKHUUDLVHGEHGV with dirt from “up Bear Creek” she purchased from the Hen- derson Logging Company. She mixed that with compost, and “a little Miracle Grow.” Most of her plants are start- ed from seed, she said. She rotates crops in the greenhouse, starting her greens in March and then letting them die out in May as the weath- HU ZDUPV VXI¿FLHQWO\ WR JURZ greens outside. New crops take the place of the greenhouse greens as they move outside. Some crops even winter over; she planted spinach last fall and it “just sat there” until spring. Then, up it came. It’s almost done in the greenhouse, now, and about to become an outdoor crop. She also sows double-crops — growing cabbage between her rows of lettuce, for in- stance. She’s growing a lot of tomatoes this year in addi- tion to the various greens she sells through the Lower Val- ley Growers Network. Since tomatoes are notorious for sucking up the soil nutrients, she waters her tomatoes with a special solution; she crushes eggshells and pours water over them, let’s them soak over- night, and waters the tomatoes with that. She has drip irrigation throughout the greenhouse and has so far managed the whole operation on city water. “They haven’t started charging us the new rates (since the completion of the water project) so we’ll see this year if it’s economical,” she said. FResh CONCRETE ON DEMAND! 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