“Everything tastes so much better out of a garden and the people here are so wonderful. I haven’t met anyone that I would consider a grump or a grouch.”
By the Fourth of July the garden will be bursting with tomatoes, basil, peppers, squash, cabbage, carrots, celery, sweet potatoes, artichokes and just about any other fruit or vegetable that can grow in this sunbaked corner of southeastern Washington.
The Asotin County Master Gardeners maintain several plots including grape vines.
“The idea is just demonstrating different crops and different techniques that people may not know about or use in their garden,” said Tanna Truscott, a master gardener from Clarkston.
Wisinger has high hopes for her 4-foot-by-10-foot plot.
“I’ll do bush beans and carrots and beets and onions,” she said. “If I can find it, I want a Japanese eggplant, not a normal eggplant. The Japanese is a more delicate plant and the eggplant is slender and I like the plant. Half of doing it is the beauty of watching them grow. Oh and I’ll have two tomato plants.”
She also has a home garden, as do many of the members.
“I’ve learned there are things that do better up by the airport where I live,” said Courtney Smith of Lewiston. “And there are things that do better down here. There are soil differences and temperature differences. So I grow some things here that I can’t grow at home.”
One potential storm cloud on the club’s horizon is the fate of Walla Walla Community College that leases the garden space to the club. If the college closes as has been proposed to deal with a budget deficit, club members worry their lease might be impacted.
But right now they are focused on the growing season. Their small greenhouse is crowded with hundreds of tomato plants. There are even more off-site.
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