Greens bed: from top to bottom kale, spinach, gold rush lettuce, tennis ball lettuce, mizuna, swiss chard
For about a month, I’ve been checking the 10-day forecast at least every other day. It tends to change over the course of 10 days, though usually the highs just get higher and the lows lower.
Since March was like April and April was very much like March, I’ve been a little confused. I’ve been putting things out in the garden, only freezing a few pea plants that had to be replanted, but not really losing anything. Some things were slow to grow or didn’t germinate well (I’m talking to you, kale and radishes) and the mizuna got eaten by some kind of tiny little cold-weather insect.
I planted a few things indoors just way too soon and so had to toss them (leggy, weak cherry tomato plants that were already flowering and would never survive even a good breeze, and some huckleberry plants that got torn up in the wind when I set them out to toughen up).
But I haven’t wanted to really take stock until the 10-day forecast hit certain benchmarks for me. Because, you see, we’ve had 75-degree days. Plenty of them for April. But they’ve been followed by freeze warnings and frost and days of gloomy, not-raining-but-really-threatening-to cold. I haven’t been watching the daytime temperatures but the nighttime ones.
On Monday, the 10-day forecast gave me what I’ve been looking for: nighttime temps in the 50s or low 40s. We just have to get to May 15, the last date for frost, and I am calling it.
Sure enough, on May 1, the season of storms began. Hot days and a storm at night. We watch anxiously to see if we’ll get the hail and winds (Tuesday night’s storm went just a hair north of us) or just the deluge. So far, so good. So yesterday I put ou
t the herbs and broccoli seedlings and today I’ll even put out some peppers in Wall-o-Waters for wind protection as much as anything. I’ve redone my garden plan to try to see where everything will go and how I can phase in some of the vine plants that will overflow the beds.
The potatoes are sending their first clusters of leaves through the newly dug, clay-hardened dirt and the beets are doing their wonderful thing, little clusters of shoots with bright red and green stems.
Even the asparagus (well, about 3/4 of the plants) have recovered after the freeze and put up a forest of stalks. I don’t harvest this year to let the root really get going. Next spring– asparagus!
Life is good.