on Cheating

I think someone finally hit the OFF switch on the rain. I usually don't mind the rain and enjoy Michigan's intense mix-up of various weather conditions, but having April and May be near record-breaking months for rainfall seriously messed with my head a bit. It also messed with my garden.

In the spring I typically direct sow a lot of our plants. This usually works very well. For more delicate things that take a longer time to germinate and grow, I will barter with a friend for her amazing heirloom tomatoes and peppers that she starts near her wood stove under grow lights sometime in February/March. I've never had much luck with brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes (they both have a loooong growing period) and neither get very big before the cold weather necessitates harvesting. Or at least, that's been my experience. I am admittedly, a very low-key gardener.

At any rate, direct seed sowing. There were a few warm, sunny days in May that fooled me into thinking "real" May weather was here. I readied the soil and planted a lot seeds. I held off on the squash and cukes, knowing that the seeds usually won't germinate in cold, wet soil. Well the next 3 weeks seemed to be nothing but cold and wet. Every day I would squat in the gardens, squinting through new weeds, trying to discern seedlings that surely should be coming up. Seedlings that come up for me every year when I throw them in the dirt. Not so.

Well no, not all. Actually, things did come up, although they took much longer. Lettuce mixes, chard, cilantro, beets, radishes, turnips, carrots (spottily), parsnips, spinach and some basil came through.
Sacrificed seeds: parigi carrots, pole beans, French green beans, some basil...surely more that I'm just blocking.

As for the cukes and squash, I kept holding off waiting for warmer, dryer soil until I waited too long and felt like if I planted them now, they wouldn't have a chance to grow enough before autumn. So I cheated. I drove my butt to the local market and bought pole beans, bush beans, cucumbers, a few more basil plants, a couple varieties of squash and watermelon just for fun.

The gardens are now fully planted. The potatoes I planted a month or so ago took longer to sprout than usual, again I think because of the weather. Now, they're totally gangbusters and need to be hilled/mulched. The tomato plants from my pal are doing great and also need to be weeded. Everything else looks good for now. I spent a few hours weeding last evening and I'm full of mosquito bites to prove it. (Thanks super wet spring for lending a hand in producing hummingbird-sized mosquitoes.) I always remember how Michigan used to be one big, frickin' swamp before it started becoming settled in the 1800s.

Oh well.It's all good. Happy to have fresh food beginning to grow. Leaves more time for the construction of Fort T in the back yard. ;)