Happy Martin Luther King Day. The official start of gardening season 2012!
Well, maybe it isn’t for some people. Maybe there are a few early birds out there saying Hah! I already have my garden planned and the seed and plant order sent in. To these people, I doff my straw sun hat and click the heels of my heavy-duty boots.
I just find it convenient to use holidays as a gardening deadline calendar. St. Patrick’s Day is peas, potatoes and onions, Palm Sunday is spinach and perhaps beets and carrots, Mother’s Day is corn, cukes and squash.
And Martin Luther King Day is seed ordering time. Roughly.
I’ve spent the past two days deep under the catalogs, past ordering records and grid paper because 2012 promises to be a major change year for our garden.
You can’t really start a new gardening year without looking at what went wrong last year and what you need to change. And whoa…last year had plenty that needs fixing.
For instance, last year I came to the painful decision that the strawberries have been in the same location too long. I’ve done everything possible–pulled out older plants, added new soil, added new plants. But the bed barely gave us enough for breakfast berries last year.
So this spring, we’re adding 1-2 feet across the front, short end of the garden and starting with fresh strawberry plants. That will mean more work for Mike: Digging out the sod, changing the fencing. But instead of putting the old bed back to lawn, we’ll use it for another crop. Perhaps green beans.
Last year’s extreme heat was also horrible for tomatoes, and as a result, my pantry inventory of tomato products is shockingly low. So this year I’m cutting back on the space normally used for the vegetables that aren’t as popular in our house–eggplants, zucchini, etc. And we’re dialing way up on the tomatoes. I’ve got squares drawn in for 36 paste tomatoes and 12 slicers. Because of the weird wilt we had last year, they’ll be all new seeds and on the opposite sides of the garden from last time. They’ll also be my old proven winners, Roma and Celebrity. No experiments this year.
Likewise, I’ll be planting fewer onions and potatoes to make room for all those tomatoes. And I’m going back to Packman broccoli, Waltham butternut squash, Bright Lights chard and Alibi cucumber, which haven’t disappointed yet.
It’s hard to know how to play the weather. Last year it was punishingly hot for too long, and with today’s temperature starting out 34 degrees above normal at 8 am, it’s easy to be defeatist. But then, we’ve had many, many long hot summers since I’ve lived here. And these are the varieties that have served us well. Or as well as could be expected, anyway.
So time to hunker down. We’ll need to get those seeds back soon so we can begin the basement growing flats. Forget La Nina and global warming. This is going to be the best year yet.
Posted by: Roxie
PS. I may try on-line ordering again this year, instead of sending it snail mail. The first time I tried, on-line ordering was so new that the seed companies told me it would actually take longer to get my order. When I called today, they said that has been corrected. But there’s still no easy way to tell them not to substitute those seeds you spent two days picking out. R.H. Shumway’s customer service rep told me today that you have to put your “no substitutes” message in the box meant for a gift message, then call the next day to make sure they actually read it. Feh.
