The Spring Garden: Plant, Plant, and Plant Again

The story of the spring garden is much like past years… in some ways. We plant early to try to beat the summer heat because it isn’t abnormal to be cool like spring one week and in the 90s the next. We are now already full-on in the latter stage, by the way.

But this year’s spring garden story did not go as years previous in one critical way. We have always known that frosts are likely in April and that if we plant those warm weather items like tomatillos and cucumbers and green beans, we may lose everything to a frost. We tell ourselves we’ll cover the plants, and we do, but covering them only goes so far. It’s been worth the early planting the last couple of years. A mild spring went straight into full throttle summer and we were harvesting all of those summer items in June before the worst of the summer heat and drought could set in.

But that wasn’t to be the case this year.

At the very beginning of April we woke up to a pretty good frost. We’d covered the tomatillos and tomatoes and squash and whatever else we could find enough cloches and blankets for. But the potato field… there was simply no covering over 300 potato plants. So we hustled out and threw bucket after bucket of water down one row and then another before the sun hit them. The leaves were nearly all black by mid-morning but mercifully, that doesn’t seem to take down the plant itself. The stems and roots would recover but a later harvest date seems inevitable.

The 20 tomatillos dropped dead in their tracks, despite being covered in cloches, as did some green beans, squash, and tomatoes. The beets and lettuce actually enjoyed that bout of cold and the radishes wilted a bit but kept giving salads up until nearly a week ago now.

So we replanted. Tomatoes went in in place of the tomatillos. I added some peppers, put in a second planting of the cucumbers and melons that wouldn’t germinate (cold soil?), and put in a second round of green beans. And then not a week or two later wouldn’t you know that we’d wake to another frosty morning.

We had covered the tomatoes the night before and only had set backs and the potatoes made it through fine this time. But the cukes and melons that had just come up were gone, as were more green beans. The squash was already mowed down by a serious bug problem, and any that had survived were now no longer with us.

So we replanted.

A third round of green beans. A third round of melons and cukes. A third round of squash. Sunflowers where the green beans failed and then the beets failed. Tomatillo seeds where we pulled the radishes.

For the first time since I can remember, we used up nearly all of the seeds we ordered and even picked up a few extra packets here and there. It pleased the Lord that we would have a cooler April and plant a lot of seeds this year and that process has been good for me.

I still don’t know what will become of this early summer garden of ours. We are very gratefully eating salads every day, pulling beets as they come to size, frying up kale almost daily, and eagerly dug up a couple of potato plants for a glimpse (and taste) at what lay beneath. But as to the summer crops, only time will tell.

Lord willing, planting will continue as we put in deep-summer crops like sweet potatoes, okra, cowpeas, and maybe more eggplant. I believe it is worth noting that Stewart has been quite busy with other things this year so the boys and I have been in charge of the garden. We have the easy work, it seems, after he spent no less than five years turning this soil in this space into something usable, entirely by hand. And I dare say he has a greener thumb than I… and I don’t remember the weeds being quite so bad when he was doing the bulk of the gardening in years past, either. Hmm…

Still, I am thankful to be able to sink my hands into the dirt and hoe a row and work with these growing boys of ours. So I think I’ll just keep planting, as long as the Lord allows, and see what it is He has for us to harvest.