Waiting for summer vegetables

I know they're coming. The summer vegetables, that is.

I'm waiting for squash, tomatoes, and beans, in particular, having just about eaten my fill of greens and lettuce. My gardening companion (a good vegetable eater) commented this evening that he needs to eat lettuce at every meal, after putting away yet more freshly-washed and spun leaves. (These were actually harvested as one of the props for a couple of 1st grade plant classes, illustrating plant diversity -- they were impressed by the deer tongue, purple-tingled, and speckled lettuces, I think!)

My gardening friends (hrrmph, they know who they are) that were early planters are already seeing zucchini flowers, at the same time mine barely have 4 or 5 leaves (I was late in planting). This may be a challenging squash vine borer year; the C. moschata squash (winter squash and tromboncino) will sail through probably, but I guess I can hope that the colder than usual winter had a detrimental effect on overwintering larvae, for the Ronde de Nice and pattypan squash.

I've started to harvest heads of garlic to use fresh. The larger harvest to dry and keep will come a bit later. But in the meantime, we'll enjoy fresh -- yum. We have more than enough (see photo -- think about the patches here in the main vegetable garden multiplied by 4). I should be able to plant some later sowings of squash and beans in these patches!

Planting warm season vegetables

It's tempting when the weather's mild to think about putting out tomatoes and peppers, and sowing seeds of squash and cucumbers, especially when the garden centers are full of plants. It's still too soon for us for the really warm-weather loving plants, based on the last 'average' frost date of April 15.

But, there's a progression of sowing as the soil temperatures gradually warm. First, the really cold-hardy plants (garden peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, fava beans, and onion plants), then as spring gets underway (but frost might still be a possibility), planting spinach, potatoes, carrots, beets, chard, more greens, and lettuce. Winter squash seed can be planted now, getting a jump on the long season they need, but basically the seeds wait until the soil warms up enough to trigger germination.

It's always an interesting progression, swapping out bed space, checking soil temperatures, and watching the amount of rain and whether a cold snap might be in store. This year, I seem to have an awful lot of space allocated to garlic, onions, and their kin. We quite enjoy all of them, but definitely I'm not ordering so many onion plants next year! Clearly fresh 'scallions' and young garlic will be on the menu to make room for some of the warm-season vegetables.

Extending the seasons

As a nature observer, I love watching the changing of seasons. The days are definitely getting shorter, the nocturnal symphony is getting quieter, and early signs of fall are signaled by changes in leaf color in tulip poplars, sassafras, and sourwood.

From a vegetable-gardening perspective, though, I'm a bit greedy (even though I'm planting fall crops in earnest now). Not content with the long (three seasons) that I have, I'm figuring that I need to put together the sturdy cedar cold frame that I ordered to replace a flimsy aluminum one I bought a few years ago.

If I was handy with tools, or my gardening companion was (and alas, he's not), I know I could make one myself. But I don't have power saws or fancy drills. My new cold frame, I'm sure, won't look like these high-end English made ones, but the pieces look very sturdy! My idea is to carry over spinach, lettuce, and tenderer salad greens that might otherwise be frosted in our Zone 7b (working on Zone 8) climate, and experiment holding some of them over cold weather (think Elliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest), an inspirational book, to be sure.

And why don't we have more small greenhouses in the U.S. like this delightful one, in a rectory garden in Southern England?

Inexpensive (for a greenhouse), simple, and not too big.

Just about time to start planting warm season veggies

It looks like our nighttime temperatures will be in the upper 40°s F to the lower 50°s (8 - 11 °C) for the next week or so, so I up-potted the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant that had been living in the mudroom into larger pots, getting them ready to transfer into the garden. I didn't grow anything from seeds this year for transplant, so I'm relying on growing what I can find. I've had good success with mail-order seedlings for more interesting things; excellent nurseries pack them up nicely and plants are resilient. Poblano peppers and tomatillos are plants that you'd think would be interesting to gardeners in a warm summer climate like ours, but are rarely available locally.

I made a sowing of summer mix lettuce in a flat yesterday evening, and admired the 'wild garden mix' growing in part of a block of the main vegetable garden -- the speckled lettuce is always lovely.

The tulips were lovely, too, just before the warmer weather hit. They don't 'work for a living' -but they get special dispensation for delighting the gardener.

The grocery store Liatris corms have sprouted nicely (I felt like I was rescuing them when I bought them).

And the Ajuga, Veronica, and sage (along with the annual Violas) make a nice container planting.