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Occasional rain with some snow mixing in for the afternoon. High 44F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
Periods of snow. Low 34F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snowfall around one inch.
Updated: November 1, 2022 @ 3:23 am
The Latah County Commissioners on Monday signed a letter of support for establishing a youth crisis center in Moscow.
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“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world. … No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
I started feeling the pressure in early June, after I planted 42 pumpkin seeds in peat pots and set them on our patio to germinate. The seedlings didn’t realize that my continuing self-worth as a pumpkin gardener depended on their performance. Last year, after a decade of failure, I managed …
Tom Kammerzell, a Port of Whitman County commissioner, will serve as president of Pacific Northwest Waterways Association for 2023, the organization announced recently.
Great pumpkins indeed: Sydney Craft Rozen’s garden produced a whopping 360 pounds of pumpkins this season, more than tripling the goal of the columnist.
Sydney Craft Rozen
Sydney Craft Rozen
Great pumpkins indeed: Sydney Craft Rozen’s garden produced a whopping 360 pounds of pumpkins this season, more than tripling the goal of the columnist.
I started feeling the pressure in early June, after I planted 42 pumpkin seeds in peat pots and set them on our patio to germinate. The seedlings didn’t realize that my continuing self-worth as a pumpkin gardener depended on their performance. Last year, after a decade of failure, I managed to grow 87 pounds of pumpkins. This season I wanted to see if that harvest was the first step on the road to pumpkin glory or simply a participation trophy from the Garden Goddess. I announced a new goal: I would grow the equivalent of my weight in pumpkins, 112 pounds.
Planting 42 pumpkin seeds might seem extreme, but last summer I sowed an entire packet of lettuce seeds and not even one seed germinated. It was realistic, then, to expect that only half of my original 42 pumpkin seeds would sprout, and that half of the remaining 21 would die in the July heat or drown from the effects of over-watering. I’d be lucky to start out with 10 healthy pumpkin plants. But when all 42 seeds actually germinated, my impetuous nature kicked in, and I spaded and added compost to an 8×16-foot raised bed. After each seedling developed two healthy leaves, I stuffed 22 of the little plants into three long rows in the spacious bed. Twenty healthy seedlings remained, though, so I prepped two more nearby beds and planted 10 seedlings in each bed, raising the total to 42 plants from 11 pumpkin varieties.
A sensible gardener would have labeled and planted the pumpkins in groups, sorted by variety, making it easier for me to identify them at harvest time. Instead, I created a random and more interesting pumpkin patch by placing Bellatrix next to Magic Lantern; Cinderella alongside Blue Doll; Mrs. Wrinkles next to Scream, and Porcelain Princess beside a Black Cat. The mix-and-match pairings made me smile, and later, after the pumpkins developed, Lee wondered whether a romantic tryst between Cinderella and Blue Doll had produced my favorite pumpkin — jade green, marbled with blue and shaped like a fairy-tale carriage.
Surely this assortment could produce 112 pounds, I thought, even as I struggled with an ethical issue. Besides planting 35 seeds for normal-size pumpkins, I’d also included seven seeds from a big honkin’ hybrid named EZ Grow Monster. If even one of its seeds germinated, the monster could score 100 pounds toward my goal with the first creak of the scale. Then the hamster wheel in my head started spinning. If the hybrid pumpkins lived up to the hype on their seed packet, would it be ethical to include their bloat with the weight of my own garden-variety pumpkins? Maybe the EZs should have a separate weight category so they wouldn’t skew the results. But I really deserved a win at the weigh-in after years of embarrassment, and who would actually care that I had sneaked a ringer or two (or seven) into the pumpkin patch? (I’m amazed that I could keep the hamster wheel spinning so fast, even though I wasn’t wearing the T-shirt that defines me: “Hold on. Let me overthink this.”)
Lee and I harvested the pumpkins last weekend, after a slog among the crisscrossed vines. The corresponding plant markers had gotten lost in the vine maze weeks ago, so we had to identify each pumpkin by tracing its vine back to the root stem. As I called out a name, Lee used a strip of masking tape to label, number and categorize each pumpkin.
I had grown 40 pumpkins: blue-green, pastel pink, banana yellow, green with black-splotches, orange with green splotches, pinkish orange, yellow-striped tangerine, grayish blue and Halloween orange. Forty pumpkins, planted in rich, composted soil, with daily doses of praise and encouragement, an application of fertilizer a few weeks after planting, and water from soaker hoses nearly every night until October.
The great pumpkin weigh-in began with a bathroom scale on our patio table. Math is not my forte, so I carried the pumpkins, and Lee charted their family names and numbers as he weighed them. When he showed me the final results, I stared at the total and checked the number three times: 360 pounds. Four pumpkin families carried most of the weight. The Mrs. Wrinkles clan, including a noticeably cheeky family member, contributed 91 pounds. Witchy Bellatrixes added 80 pounds. Scary Screams supplied 47 pounds, and classic Magic Lanterns produced 43 pounds.Other pumpkins weighed in at points along the scale, ending at three pounds from two little Black Cats. The EZ Grow Monsters? Twenty-nine pounds total from seven over-promoted squash. Now, one more time: 360 pounds of pumpkins. Weight goal surpassed. Impetuous gardener beyond proud.
Craft Rozen’s grandchildren will carve homegrown pumpkins from her gardenthis year. Email her at scraftroze@aol.com.
Sydney Craft Rozen
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