Monday, May 11, 2009

planting time

A general rule of (green) thumb is that Mother's day weekend is also the time to plant your gardens. Any earlier, and you face certain garden-death via freak snowstorm. I love getting our garden in order, and since I kind of phoned it in last year, I'm all the more excited this year.

Don't get me wrong - we planted stuff last year. And I had very good intentions of actually tending the garden. But what kept me from a bounteous harvest? Oh yeah - a BABY. Not that she required a ton of attention - she was a newborn. But I seemed to have used up all of my energy reserves in BIRTHING her, so yeah - I drank a lot of milkshakes trying to regain that energy. Two things: it didn't really return until maybe October? and the oreo shakes from Chick-Fil-A may have actually had a detrimental affect on that energy bit. But they were delicious!

So on Saturday we traipsed down to Ace Hardware - you know, the hardware store where you can find people to help you and those people actually know what they're talking about? Yeah, and there we picked up our soon-to-be crop. A couple weeks ago I planted bush beans and lettuce. We were successful with the beans last year and I thought lettuce would be a good thing to plant. Except that I had two already-open packets of lettuce seeds. So I must have planted them last year? Only, I don't recall harvesting any lettuce last year...I guess we'll see if this year is better.

Today I set about actually planting and this is what we'll (hopefully) have: tomatoes (varieties include a cherry, a brandywine, and then a couple heirlooms - wait, maybe they're all heirlooms? I don't know. I don't care, as long as they bare fruit), red bell peppers, jalapenos, zucchini, cucumbers, swiss chard, perpetual lettuce (THIS could be interesting), strawberries, more lettuce, basil, cilantro, italian parsley. I started canteloupe, watermelon, and pumpkin a while ago and will transplant them soon. For the canteloupe and watermelon, I seem to have picked up seeds for midget (look, I know that's not pc, but it's on the label) and icebox varieties, which means they're going to be smaller than average (the canteloupes are supposed to be 4-5" in diameter). To offset this, one of the tomatoes is a goliath type. I'm assuming they mean large, rather than small-and-hard-and-can-be-used-as-weapons. And then of course we have our grapevine and the green onions that don't die.

This time of year also brings out the dandelions like nobody's business. And I cannot STAND dandelions. Seriously. I actually fall to my knees so I can rip those suckers out as long as they are in my yard. On Saturday, I was doing just that when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and, I kid you not, beheld an earthworm rise about two inches up (was it standing?), DIVE into the grass and slither out of sight. In a matter of seconds. My initial thought was, "Who knew worms were speedy?" and then I heard myself tell myself(?), "Well, remember that episode of Curious George where he has a worm and they do races? Remember how you thought that was an absurd concept? Who's laughing NOW?!" Touche, George. My (not yellow) had is off to you. But man, if I have these seemingly-steroid-laced worms inhabiting my yard, then this bodes very well for my harvest. I think.

2 comments:

Alice said...

I've practically been living at Ace Hardware during this pregnancy with all the projects. During my 1st trimester I almost fainted there. I've never had so much attention from so many men in my life at one time:)

Unknown said...

Scott has some gadget he uses to get the dandylions up. It is a neverending project.