In my weekly heads-up email to county residents(email me if you want in) I mentioned that we have a ten day forecast of 3 days of nice warm weather followed by 7 days of nice, wet weather. While the first week of March is not usually the best planting time, I am all about experimentation in the garden. Seeds are cheap, veggies cost money. Why not take a chance with a few seeds in a small corner of the garden to see if we get an early April payoff?
First things first. The compost pile. I am a cold compost pile person as a rule preferring the effects of time, wind, weather and critters to break my pile down for me. As you can see here:
A few minutes with a garden fork messing it up a bit, mixing into the layers and adding some oxygen make it look a little better:
Mother nature will water that for me this week. I will probably give it another stir in a week or two as that much water may be too much. The next thing I did was take the transplants that I used as demonstration plants when I did a Seed Starting class for the Four Seasons Garden Club:
They went into my kitchen garden and were watered with a dilute fertilizer solution to give them a head start. In a couple weeks I will start to harvest them and that should extend into May. I interplanted them with some overwintered spinach plants for a nice salad mix.
Finally I covered them back up with floating row cover. I don’t need it for cold protection any time soon, it will provide protection from rabbits, deer and squirrels who would love to find some fresh produce right about now.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with early plantings or late plantings. The worst thing that happens is you are out a little bit of seed. I still recommend succession plantings of spring greens every two weeks for at least the next month.
I will be teaching these techniques at classes at the Youth Center each month starting in April. Watch this site for more information.