My Peace Country Garden…

Whoo Weeeee…the wind has been howling for three days now and despite it coming from the south it is anything but warm. Two days ago the leaves on the poplar trees started to unfurl but it appears they have since started to curl up again against the cold. I persisted in planting the garden anyway – even the carrot seeds! How anything so microscopic can contain an entire carrot is just one of the many mysteries that makes gardening so interesting.  Just why a gardener would huddle over the carrot bed to shield the seeds from blowing away in the wind instead of waiting for a calmer day is also a mystery. Crazy impatience! Afterwards I spread sheets of burlap over the carrot beds and watered them down. I discovered that trick a few years back and it works like a charm to keep the little carrot seeds from drying out for the long two to three weeks it takes for them to germinate. The burlap still lets water and light through – though carrots don’t need light to germinate so a board would work equally well. Both help keep seeds from blowing away. Frequent watering is still a must. Especially during a hurricane…

The only seeds I lost in the wind were a packet of sweet peas. I had opened the package up and then set it down inside a box filled with seed packets for just a second while I picked up the hoe, when a big gust of wind tipped over the seed box and sent the sweet pea packet cartwheeling across the garden. By the time I caught up with it all the seeds were gone. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll find a trail of sweet pea sprouts to mark the path it took…but I doubt it. Strangely enough all the other seed packets (all unopened of course) stayed in the box.

Our trio of Icelandic sheep – from left to right Ulio, Zuess and Whippersnipper - were sheared two days ago. It’s always hard timing it so the fleece comes off at the optimum time. They look pretty happy to have shed all that weight, but I’m thinking perhaps they’re missing their woolly coats on this wind whipped day! Zuess has beautiful fleece which I am tucking away for that winter day when I finally learn how to spin. The other two fleeces are for my containers. I use them to line the sides and bottom. The wool wicks up any excess water and then leaches it back into the soil as it dries out. It might be a good burlap replacement over the carrot beds too – it would certainly insulate and absorb water better. Maybe I’ll use some on one of the beds just to compare…gardeners are kind of like scientists hey? Always experimenting and completely in awe of the world around them!

Went by the Mapple Farm site while still trying to decide whether to bother ordering more sweet potato slips to replace the frozen-by-mail ones and I see they are sold out. So now, of course, I want them more than anything! Nothing stirs a gardener’s blood more than the idea that they can’t have a plant. Even if it’s the ugliest looking perennial or the most foul tasting vegetable -keeping in mind everything is a matter of personal taste – tell a gardener they can’t have it and they will remortgage the house just for the chance to bring it home. Well, almost. Or maybe that’s just me…

After two days of wet snow and April showers the sun has come back out. I can hear the summer birds singing as I type – and Rusty the rooster crowing as he scratches about in the thawing earth for worms and bugs. With so much spring in the air it’s impossible to stay down about something as trivial as sweet potato slips for long! I think I will try a butternut squash in  my raised straw bale bed instead…

Well, so much for my sweet potatoes. Found their poor little carcasses frozen to the quick in our mailbox last night. That’s what I get for not picking up my mail every day. We pick up our mail at one of those green metal multi-unit mail boxes just over a mile from our house. It’s the perfect incentive for a little exercise and a favorite walk for our little dog Cosmo. In the last couple years our mail delivery switched from three days a week to five; something I haven’t adjusted to. In the past, three days a week we walked to the mailbox and the other four we’d go in the opposite direction. And now, even with mail awaiting us five days a week, it can get boring going the same way day after day. And often the only thing awaiting us is a couple glossy pizza flyers. So more often than not we alternate directions and let the mail build up in the box for a couple days. Not a good plan when live plants are involved.

I want to blame someone else but I can’t. The mail person doesn’t have to deliver parcels even when they fit in our box. All she is required to do is drop off a post office slip letting us know we have a parcel awaiting us in town. To make the effort to deliver the parcel is an act of kindness.

And it’s not the fault of the mail order nursery. The potato slips were tenderly wrapped and packaged.

Ah well, so the gardening goes. I always worry about losing my sweet potatoes to frost, but never imagined it would happen this early in the game!!! Now I am considering if its worth reordering or if I should just plant something else in my straw bale bed instead…