It is finally time for gardening

The 2011 gar­den sea­son is offi­cially launched. The onions are up and grow­ing well in a row of deep flats. I’ll trans­plant them into the gar­den soon.

One shelf of my base­ment light unit is filled with early cab­bage, Chi­nese and Savoy cab­bage, broc­coli, pars­ley, laven­der, cone­flow­ers, pep­pers, and sev­eral other herbs and flow­ers that will fill the gar­den this sum­mer. I sowed 17 kinds of tomato seeds and they have all ger­mi­nated. These tomato seedlings fill part of another shelf and will be trans­planted into indi­vid­ual pots soon.

All the seedlings will be moved to the hoop house as soon as the night­time tem­per­a­tures stay in the high thir­ties. We have invested in a small heater that can be left on overnight to keep the seedlings from get­ting too chilled.

In the gar­den proper a few of the raised beds are already work­able so the Lin­coln and Sugar peas, the shal­lots, and three kinds of let­tuce — Red Deer Tongue, Yugosla­vian Red and Matina Sweet — are already planted.

This spring, for the first time, I have use of two cold frames.

Greg built the sturdy frames last fall. He found cast off win­dows to make the pro­tec­tive sashes. He scraped off old weath­ered putty, put on new putty, and stored the sashes for the win­ter. This spring he primed the win­dows and put on a fin­ish coat of red paint. The fin­ished cold frames are beau­ti­ful. I use the frames to harden off hoop house seedlings and grow early spinach and let­tuce. In the fall I can use them for grow­ing late spinach, let­tuce, and who knows what else.

The fruit trees and grapes are pruned. The rasp­berry bed has been thinned and the old canes removed. The bed is full of new canes and looks so healthy I know we will have rasp­ber­ries to share this summer.

Some­thing has invaded the elder­berry plants. The stems are lying low to the ground and are spread hither and yon about the elder­berry bed. A borer? Rac­coons climb­ing through the plants? My gut feel­ing is that some sort of borer has invaded the plant­ing. We lost one main stem last sum­mer. It just turned crispy brown and I pruned it to the ground. All my research tells me that “elder­ber­ries have no ene­mies.” Well, mine cer­tainly do. More research will follow.

While check­ing the blue­berry bushes I dis­cov­ered a few of the chicken wire cages that sur­rounded them had been breached by the bun­nies and the plants were gnawed down. Darn those bun­nies! I know the peas­ants have to eat but we are sur­rounded by woods and fields that offer a ban­quet of choices. Why the pre­cious blueberries?

Last fall I cov­ered the straw­berry bed with a thick layer of straw. I’ll begin to slowly thin that cover of straw and allow more light onto the plants as the tem­per­a­tures rise. Remem­ber that the buds for this June’s flow­ers are already present and need to be pro­tected until the dan­ger of frost passes. I grow straw­ber­ries because the only thing bet­ter than straw­berry antic­i­pa­tion is eat­ing a just picked, sun-warm straw­berry while sit­ting in your own gar­den. Heaven!

In the front gar­den the cro­cus and iris retic­u­lata are shin­ing blue, white, and gold against the cold win­ter ground. Daf­fodils are nos­ing their way through the leafy mulch. The slen­der green leaves of Scilla and Chion­o­doxa are just now begin­ning to show their tips through the mulch.

We don’t have many early flow­er­ing shrubs in our yard but one small mag­no­lia is full of big, furry buds. The pussy wil­lows echo the mag­no­lia with smaller ver­sions of their own. I found helle­bores near bloom under the chopped leaf mulch, their red­dish buds almost touch­ing the cold ground. Mir­a­cles upon mir­a­cles are all around.

Oh, did I men­tion the peep­ers?! Wednes­day, March 16 was the magic day. I stood on the porch and heard the first jin­gling sounds of the spring peep­ers flow­ing across the back field from the woods. When the house is closed up for win­ter warmth, I miss the night sounds com­ing in through open win­dows. Win­ter nights are so quiet, except for the howl­ing coy­otes. When the peep­ers start their spring singing it means the tem­per­a­tures have risen enough to leave the bed­room win­dow open. How sweet it feels to let the peep­ers lull you to sleep after a long winter.

The spring tread­mill has started to turn. Atten­tions have turned to full-time thoughts of soil, seeds, and gar­den­ing to-do lists. There is no slow­ing down this time of year. The gar­den does not wait for slack­ers. Early cold sea­son crops need to grow while it is cool. Warm sea­son crops, mean­ing toma­toes, pep­pers, and okra, need an indoor start to be ready for the gar­den by mid-May. The cal­en­dar tells us that mid-May is only eight weeks away. Get going. Can’t you taste that salad of just picked baby greens and radishes? I almost can!

Posted by Fran Blank on Apr 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.