In the Garden Update – Almost April

(Peas, spinach, broccoli rabe...or not...)

St. Patrick's Day evokes thoughts of parades, corned beef, and green beer for some, but for me it marks the day I usually officially start my vegetable garden. Peas, spinach and broccoli rabe (rapini), my favorite cool weather crops, don't mind being sowed directly in the cold ground as long as it's not frozen and the winter mushiness has dried into a workable soil. This year, with April only a day away, the most positive thing I can say about my gardening

Compost Island

conditions is that the snow is gone. (Gone from the 

garden, not from the yard...) St. Patrick's Day has come and gone, and my soil is still frozen except for a very muddy top layer of only a few inches. I've also got bags of my neighbor's leaves under my deck, waiting to be layered with manure in my

mostly empty composters to be turned into midsummer's compost. (No trees in our yard, so I actually ask people for their leaves.) Said composters are presently on a small island surrounded by water from melting pond ice and sump pump run-off.

So my gardening season is off to a slow start...

An advantage of the slow start is that the seeds I plant later than usual will come up quicker with the rapid warmth that (often) comes in April. The downside, unless the early summer remains cool as well, is that the peas, spinach and broccoli rabe will flower and go to seed before their prime as soon as the heat hits. Timing is crucial now, and as soon as the soil is workable (which means thawed at least six inches and relatively dry), I will immediately sow my seeds for the above mentioned plants in the ground and hope for the best.

Mud-capped frozen garden

The beginning of April is also when I begin to start the not-so-cool(lettuce, random herbs) and warm weather (tomatoes, peppers, any flowers I want to set out in pots) seed indoors. Since I don't put these plants in the ground until the end of May, an early April sowing indoors gives these plants about eight weeks of growing before they are ready to be transplanted. The lettuce I will transplant into the garden after about four weeks, when the seedlings are about two inches tall. (Lettuce likes it cool, but not cold. Any herbs I'll eventually transplant into pots on the deck where they'll grow all summer and be brought inside to be used over the winter.)

The sun is shining today, and the temperature is near 60°, so there is hope the ground will thaw, the soil will dry out and the start to the gardening season is just around the corner. Time to get dirty...

(If this is the year you've decided to finally become a vegetable gardener, you might be interested in reading my blog posts from May 14 through May 20, 2013, where I outlined the techniques of square foot gardening, a method of gardening that gets you thinking about planting things in squares rather than the more traditional rows. It's a garden that is easy to weed, easy to water, and once the soil is prepared, easy to keep going.)

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York

- Richard III, William Shakespeare