Fossil Abstinence: Gardens and Orchards

Spring is wonderful: ever longer hours to garden and do things outdoors. Even spending 8 hours indoors developing equipment and keyboarding, leaves almost 8 hours of light to mow, fix fences, weed, dig, and plant.

One neat trick I’ve found that insures that the planting progress proceeds is to soak a variety of seeds in small containers (I use plastic cups that yoghurt comes in) for a day, then wash and drain them twice a day until they sprout, or until they don’t. I save lots of varieties of seeds and when they get older, fewer and fewer sprout, until usually year four or five, none do. By pre-sprouting seeds you can see how many are viable within a few days. Because nights are usually cool and it take quite awhile for leaves to show, planting seeds in soil may take a few weeks before you know just how many plants you have. It’s easy to get properly spaced, or the chosen number in a hill, of beans, corn and squash for a three sisters garden. This process also works well for other large seeds like peas, cucumbers and melons. Another benefit: incentive! As roots grow longer in the pile of seeds, you want to plant them before untangling them becomes a chore with the risk of breaking roots. Because my fingers are typically covered in soil while planting, I like to shake the container of sprouted seeds into holes or rows and not pick out individual seeds, getting the rest all dirty. When the roots grow too long, this shaking routine no longer works!

This past week we had a few severe frosts that set back many varieties, especially the grapes and asparagus. I never heard anyone covering asparagus to protect them from freezing but any spear that was showing is now shriveled up, or rotting. No frost tender transplants were yet outdoors, so our gardens are doing fine. Onions, garlic, greens and radishes don’t seem to mind getting frosted, although many broccoli leaves look burnt but seem to be growing. The cold temperatures did allow me to cut the trees around the bee hive without them bothering me. These trees and some others, in addition to supplying firewood, also provide tomato stakes. We like to train tomatoes to grow up on structures so they are easy to pick, and the fruits don’t get damaged like they often do when on the ground. This year we need at least 100 new stakes because the wire cages made of concrete reinforcing mesh that we typically use we’ll use this year for pole beans so we don’t have to move them. Because we grew tomatoes on them last year, we’d have to move them to use them again for tomatoes again this year.

On days that the sun shines brightly it important to periodically water seedlings in a greenhouse. As the plants grow, the larger sets of leaves transpire lots of water so that plants wilt if watered only once a day. Another incentive program: get the largest plants into the ground so you don’t have to water them! Many of my tomato and tomatillo plants are now well over a foot tall and should be watered three times on sunny days. Eggplants and peppers the same age are only two to four inches tall and need water only once a day.

Shoots of our non-native nut trees were severely damaged by the late frosts: heart nut, hazel nut, and English walnuts, and even our native chestnuts and hickory have many dead shoots. It’s too early to tell if the actual nut crop was damaged.  Many berries including black, rasp, mull, and blue were also nipped. The currents, champagne, red and black, and gooseberries look okay. Berries and grapes supply most of our beverages, jams and jellies and we’ll really miss them if they don’t come through.  Apple blossoms came and went before the heavy frosts and maybe their fruit will make it. Hope you are all have a better spring, at least in terms of cold weather, than we’ve had.