It's been a year since the truck pulled up in front of my new little bungalow in Yakima Marina, and now it feels so good. After all, it's been a full growing season and now it's time to review how this first year went and what the next year will bring to the garden.
I've been gardening since I was a kid in Delaware and Nebraska. And for the past thirty years I have been gardening in Bellingham on the slopes of Mt. But Yakima Valley is another world. The basics of growth are real. But to make my garden as productive as the one at Bellingham, I had to adapt many of the techniques I had developed. It can take years to achieve success.
If you are planning to plant a garden or upgrade your gardening skills, stay tuned in the coming months as I will try to learn how to grow a beautiful garden in Yakima Valley.
Do the tasks
Once the boxes were opened this past January, I began planning my new garden. My ex-husband is a garden photographer and sells pictures for gardening books, so I had plenty of examples to look at.
The truth is, most gardening books out there are not written for us. The mass market is located on the coast, where the air is mild and humid. He was considering teaming up with a local gardening writer to write a book on gardening in the Northwest, and he was told by publishers that there was no market large enough to publish it.
But I kept looking for information.
The biggest challenge for me was deciding what to plant and what kind of vegetables would work here. Broccoli, for example, is a cool-weather crop that doesn't get much "succulence" during the growing season. Spring is short and hot. Therefore, the local gardeners thought there were some special varieties that did well in the short spring and tolerated the heat well.
I called a local garden and asked if they had a list of recommended garden varieties for the area. no they did not. They suggested asking the neighbors. Well, I didn't know my neighbors yet, and my son didn't plant broccoli outside, mostly because it didn't make it in the short spring.
Finally, I looked through the seed catalogs I had brought back from Bellingham and found two types of broccoli that were said to tolerate heat well. I had to order in time to start in mid-February. And I'm happy to report that these broccoli plants were setting up delicious side shoots (after harvesting the main head) until my daughter-in-law pulled the plants in late fall.
I finally found a list of recommended species for the inland Northwest. You'll find detailed information in a book I would recommend to any gardener new to the Yakima Valley: Northwest Indoor Gardening by Tony Fitzgerald (WSU Extension). You can pick up a copy for $12 at the WSU Extension office behind Valley Mall in Union Gap or order online.
Cooking Info Another book that should be on your shelf is Growing Vegetables in Drought, Desert, and Drought Times by Maureen Gilmer (Sasquatch Books). A copy can be obtained from the Yakima Valley Library System or ordered from your local library. There is good information on heat tolerance, effective watering, and recommended plant varieties.
If you're new to gardening or didn't care much for your high school biology class, buy a beginner gardening book to learn the basics of growing plants. Remember as you read that growth here is different from what you are told. For example, there is no need to wait for the soil to dry before planting, because we are lucky if the soil is completely moist.
The last book I recommend for homework is When You Prep Your Vegetables by Steve Solomon (free PDF online). Solomon founded the Territory Seed Company and wrote the book Gardening in the West. He now lives in Tasmania and grows most of the food for his family with limited fuel. He shares ideas on how to save a lot of time, energy, and money when starting a new garden, or as he calls it, "counting."
List of vegetables for January
• Read some of the books above.
• When starting a new garden, decide where to go after consulting one or more of the books listed above. Gather there to consult with your family and find a mission to help them. A person may object to digging up their favorite lawn.
• Draw plans for the garden, including planting, spacing, spacing and number of plants needed.
• Sort the seeds if you plan to plant your own seeds or direct seeds. Mail order seeds are always fresh and you get a much larger selection than picking a package off the shelf at the hardware store. All seed companies are now online and when you order them they start sending you catalogs. There are many good companies. I've had great results and options from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Pinetree Garden Seeds. Oddly enough, both are native to Maine and definitely not suitable for desert gardeners, so read the heat tolerance description.
• Complete your spring cleaning.
• If you have recently had an aphid problem on your shrubs or trees, consider spraying them with the oil before the buds begin to swell.
Natalie McClendon moved to Yakima in the fall of 2022, wanting to re-learn gardening in a semi-arid climate after 30 years in wet weather. This year, she's sharing her gardening adventures with hits and misses. We invite our readers to follow their gardens or just your ideas.
