The Foolish Gardener Rewarded

You think the title is ironic, right?  You think that I did something stupid in the garden and now I have a disaster on my hands.  Au contraire.  The gardening gods have richly rewarded me for one of my dumbest moves ever.

Where the quasi-tropical character of my garden micro-climate is concerned, my hubris knows no bounds.  As soon as April arrives, in snow or mud I set out in search of cool season transplants--broccoli, cauliflower, salad greens and kale.  This takes some doing, because few stores are foolish enough to order plants that early.  This year, after a long search, I finally found my transplants in a back room at Walmart (sorry).

The minute I got home I went to put them into the garden beds, but when I tried to dig the first hole my trowel hit something hard, which turned out to be ice.  What to do?  I had changed into gardening clothes and was wearing rubber boots, thick gloves and my barn coat;  I had the tools and the transplants right there.  I decided to just keep going.  I gouged holes into the icy compost, bunged in the little plants, and wished them luck.

The next day they were all dead.  Not only had their roots frozen, but since they hadn't been hardened off before I bought them the sun had burned their tops to a crisp.

Taking a closer look, I noticed that deep in the center of some of the plants there was a barely visible smudge of green that might hold a slight hope of resurrection.  Then it started sleeting, so I went inside and put the garden out of my mind.

Today, just over a month later, I harvested three quarts of broccoli, which is remarkably early for this area. We've been eating lettuce and arugula for weeks, and the kale is so lush it is literally bursting out of its bed.  Turns out the little plants weren't dead after all.

But the garden gods are fickle, and just because they haven't punished me with the spring crops doesn't mean they won't rain scourges--drought, tomato wilt, and the abominable squash bugs--on the summer veggies.  Do garden gods like propitiatory offerings, and if so, what kind?

In other news, the evergreens that the deer ate during the winter are convalescing;  we have three frogs;  and last week I saw two salamanders mate in the murky water of the pond.

Be Careful What You Wish For

When the days started getting noticeably longer back in February, I wrote a post imploring spring to  hold back so I could enjoy the break from gardening a while longer:  http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2013/02/dread-of-spring.html

Boy, did that wish ever come true!  As I sit in my study wearing two sweaters and considering whether to put on a second pair of socks, curtains of sleet pour out of the sky.  The spring peepers that had cheered us for two nights in a row have stopped peeping, and the frog that floated to the top of my garden pond and gave a single croak has not been heard from again. 

Of my eight springs in Vermont, this has been by far the slowest to arrive.  Last year we'd had 80F temperatures by now, and the apple trees were setting fruit.  O.k., that was alarmingly hot, but this!

Most people around here haven't planted anything in their gardens yet.  But, crazy flatlander that I am, I put in my lettuce, kale, arugula and broccoli transplants last week.  And I made a terrible, possibly a fatal, mistake.  I was so thrilled to find the transplants available at Walmart that I failed to notice that, instead of being out in the parking lot, the racks of baby vegetables were in a room at the back of the store.

The next day they were in my garden.  And the day after that they were in extremis.  By putting them in the ground without giving them time to harden off I had shocked the little plants almost to death.  Only by peering closely at the center of each one could I see a tiny leaf or two that still seemed to be alive. 

This was followed by a couple of days when the temperature actually hit 60F for about five minutes--that was what got the peepers going--and I was certain that my transplants would survive.  But now I'm not so sure.  I'd go check on them if it weren't so raw out.  I think I'll leave them to their fate--there's little I could do for them anyway.  Sunday, we're supposed to get snow.

Quest For Transplants

At this time of year the small local nurseries, the ones that grow their own plants organically, offer greater variety, and go digging for long-forgotten heirloom veggies, keep their doors hermetically shut against people like me.

Because the vegetable beds are close to the south-facing wall of the house, my garden microclimate is at least one zone warmer than the rest of Vermont.  As a result, every spring I start my search for cool-season transplants--broccoli, lettuce, kale--quite a bit earlier than other gardeners. But  I know that if I call a local nursery inquiring about lettuce or broccoli before late April, I'll get a laugh and a lecture about Vermont weather.

So instead I go trolling in the big stores, the ones that don't care about weather or the difference between cool- and warm-season vegetables.  These stores are few and far between, and I'm usually thankful for their scarcity, except when I want to buy something.  Today I drove 45 minutes to Home Depot.  A couple of years ago, in late March, I was crossing their parking lot in a severe blizzard when I encountered racks upon racks of vegetable transplants:  broccoli, lettuce, kale, spinach, chard. Appallingly, there were also eggplants, tomatoes and peppers, dying by the dozen before my very eyes.

This year, although there was no blizzard, Home Depot was sheltering its veggies indoors.  There was red and green lettuce, which I bought, but no broccoli or kale.  And, again, there were racks full of tomatoes and peppers, which even a daredevil gardener such as I would not dream of putting outside before Memorial Day.  The best thing about my Home Depot experience was that their transplants are now in peat containers, so you don't have to deal with those unrecyclable black plastic pots.  Also, I found some stevia--that magically sweet herb.  I'll have to search the web for how to grow it, and how to use it.

On my way to another errand I passed by Walmart.  I wasn't sure that Walmart even believes in live plants, but I decided to give it a try.  I always get depressed when I walk into that store.  Everything seems so gray--the walls, the floor, even the light.  And the people in it are gray too--gray skin, gray hair, gray looks in their eyes.  And the average adult weight of the customers, even in this least obese of states, seems to be around 200 lbs.

But there, in a cramped gray room at the back of the store, were all the cool season veggies one could possibly want:  lettuce, broccoli, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts--even arugula, which I had only grown from seed before.  All looking sprightly and not a bit gray.

Back home, I let the little veggies spend the afternoon on the patio, but brought them in for the night and gave them showers at the kitchen sink.  Tomorrow morning, first thing, they will go into the ground.  And in a couple of weeks, thanks to the big stores, we'll be eating salad for dinner.