We’ve been having a leap-frog spring, one in which the
temperatures have hopped over the normal highs in the 60s and 70s right to the
80s. That might seem like a good thing for a gardener, but really it’s not,
because it just makes me feel like I’m a month behind, when according to the
calendar, I’m really a little ahead of
schedule. Normally, I gauge my planting
of tender annuals and heat-lovers like tomatoes and peppers by a last-frost
date around Mothers’ Day. This year,
Mothers’ Day is on the early side, but our highs from two weeks ago (60s) are
suddenly our lows. Cool season plants,
like Swiss chard and snow peas, are fainting like Victorian ladies at a
Chippendales’ show. My tomato and
pepper seedlings are not ready for this kind of intensity; they look like beach
bunnies who forgot their sunscreen.
 |
| Homeless seedlings |
I’m trying to get my seedlings into the ground, but starts
need a week of gradual acclimatization in the real outdoor sun, adding an hour
or two per day. That’s why some of these
are looking a little beat up. A week of
travel to California left them neglected, and I lost a few. The real challenge is that I started
cucumbers and squash at the same time and neglected to mark them
carefully. I’m assuming that the
cucumbers were the most sensitive and succumbed, but I can’t tell, at this
time, which ones survived. I bought more
cucumbers, so come harvest time, I may be surprised to have more cucumbers that
I planned on.
I added potatoes to my garden this year, but no sprouts are
showing yet. This is making me very
nervous, but I’m resisting the temptation to excavate to see what’s
happening.
 |
| Potatoes should appear here^ |
While cleaning out the raised bed, I found a couple of
over-wintered onions and, gift from some passing bird, a volunteer
strawberry.
The way that nature
perpetuates itself always makes me smile. We have a clump of strawberries right below
the spot under the eaves where birds nest every year. The only explanation I can think of is that
the birds were eating the strawberries that were planted on the other side of
the yard and “deposited” the seeds below their nest.
