Emergence!

When I started working the ground in the garden this Spring, it felt strangely mechanical. Every other year I had experienced a kind of exhilaration. I began to wonder whether my passion for the garden had waned, or worse, that it was an illusion. I wondered, too, whether taking a year off had exposed my gardening more as a ‘habit’ than an essential part of my life, which truly fed my soul. It was an existential crisis for me. But, I kept at it. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

As I mentioned in my last post, early Spring has been unusually dry this year. The favorable  conditions have allowed me to open up a lot of ground in the garden and get things planted. However, with little or no rainfall, the seeds basically have just been sitting there doing nothing. Last Friday, however, we finally had a good soaking rain. When the sun came out on Saturday morning, the seeds all began to emerge. It was as if someone had flipped a switch. It helped, too, that the weather was quite mild. We had abundant sunshine and temperatures in the 70’s both Saturday and Sunday. Seeing those shoots sprout from the earth was all I needed. It was as if someone had flipped switch inside me, too.  That sense of exhilaration, that sense of participating in the act of creation, came flooding back. Like the earth waking from its winter slumber, I was being reborn as well.

Seedlings outside hardening off.

I was able to do some transplanting on Saturday, but stopped when the weather turned so warm. Parsley, kohlrabi and dandelions were all sufficiently hardened-off to go out in the open. I did plant some more seeds, though – Chioggia beets and a first try at some bush beans. I know well that planting beans so early in the season is a big gamble, but if they make it, we’ll be eating fresh beans in June! If not, I’ll be out a few hundred seeds. Clouds began rolling in on Sunday afternoon and more rain was predicted, so I decided to finish my transplanting. All the parsley, kohlrabi and most of the dandelion seedlings found a new home in the great outdoors. Just as predicted, the heavens opened up around 4:00 a.m. Monday morning in a glorious display of thunder and lightning. I could roll over and go back to sleep contentedly knowing that my seedlings were being watered in.

In the foreground, eggplants ready to be moved

Speaking of seedlings, operations in the mudroom are in high gear. At this point, all the warm weather vegetables – eggplants, peppers and tomatoes have been seeded. Cool weather crops, more parsley, dill and a few morning glories are up and growing. I seeded the first flat of basil yesterday and will do another soon. The task now, however, is transplanting the seedlings into individual pots. Years ago I discovered a handy little item called a PotMaker (another kind may soon be possible here in the Garden State!). The PotMaker is a wooden cylinder with a base that allows you to make pots out of newspaper. These pots can then be planted directly into the ground, where the newspaper disintegrates. I love this gadget, because not only is it environmentally friendly, but also because it allows me to create as many pots as I need at no cost. When I was moving back into the mudroom, I saw the PotMaker in the box with other odds and ends. Finally, last week, the eggplants were outgrowing their containers. It was time to start potting them up! I reached into the box of miscellaneous items and pulled out the Pot maker, which I had wrapped in newspaper. When I unwrapped it, I discovered, to my horror, that the base was missing! I had the cylinder but not the base. What to do?

The PotMaker

 Amazon Prime to the rescue. I Googled it on my phone and, since it was before 8:00 am, I was promised delivery the next day. Boom! Done. So now, I have a brand new PotMaker and I have been hard at work. I timed it yesterday; and it takes me roughly one hour to make a flat full of pots (36) and fill them.

The next step is to move the newly potted plants to the greenhouse in Trinity Hall, the main school building. They will stay there until nighttime temperatures begin to move into the 50’s, usually around mid-May. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that it might be earlier this year. That would be a good thing. The earlier I can get these plants into the ground, the earlier I can start harvesting from them. After all, that’s what this is really all about.