Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Spring is finally here...or is it? When it comes to the warm weather, I am impatient. As anxious as I am to get the garden started each year--I like to spend early January days deciding what to plant three months later--I am a wimpy gardener. Even when its in the low 50s, I'll be outside in my flannel pants, wool socks and fleece hat with earflaps. Yet, as I drove home from my parents this past misty Sunday morning, I felt like I could see the landscape bursting into green as I drove up the highway. The sun was trying to come out, and through the filter of light rain, everything seemed clean, perfect, idyllic. Fields are greening up, flowering trees are in full bloom, and daffodils and narcissus are abundant. The proof of spring is everywhere, I just might have to wait a little longer for the sunshine.

Really, I should be grateful to have soil that can be worked when everything is cold and damp, even in February. Where I am in Cecil County, the soil is a light, sandy loam. Even after a torrential rainfall, the ground drains enough in a day that I could work the soil for planting. In Dorchester County, where my mother gardens, it can be late April and her heavy clay soil is typically so mucky that she sinks down past her ankles when she ventures out into the garden. That is not to say I don't have problems with soil fertility. My yard is located on an old farm field, and while a portion of it received a good layer of topsoil when our house was built, some of it is a powdery mixture of pebbles, stones and sand. Occasionally, I remove grass for a new bed to find a layer of orange fill dirt. Trying to grow anything in that stuff is like trying to cultivate crops on the beach.

I have been working compost into my plot annually for over 10 years. While some folks I know feed everything with Miracle Gro mid-summer, I know I have to get that compost into the soil early and I have to pay for it with lots of shoveling and with cash. We are fortunate to be fairly close to the mushroom growing regions of southeastern Pennsylvania, where "mushroom soil" is readily available, a dark mixture of composted horse manure and straw used as a growing medium. It is truly beautiful stuff, and has a very mild odor that quickly goes away after it has been incorporated into the soil. For two or three years, my Amish neighbor got a tractor trailer load of mushroom soil (no exaggeration) , which she used simply to top dress her growing crops. This requires less effort than working it into her large garden, and I have no doubt it worked well in the end.

Of course, I have my own compost pile which I turn regularly, but not religiously. I had enough finished compost from last year to dress my new raised bed for the lettuce and to work into the soil when I moved all of my Hull thornless blackberries in late February. Two weeks ago, with onion sets and potatoes imminent, I made my run to the local stone and dirt lot for my first truckload of mushroom soil. After years of gardening organically, I only add about an inch of compost each year. A few years ago, I thought I could get away with neglecting one portion of the garden. My tomatoes that year were sickly and stunted, with the exception of two thriving plants. These grew adjacent to my new raised strawberry beds which had received about 3 inches of mushroom soil. Never again will I deprive my garden of its annual dose of compost!

Though the weather has been cool, the garden is on its way. I have been more on top of things than many years, but not as early as I should have been. I seeded the lettuce (green and red leaf, oakleaf, butterhead) and spinach (smooth and savoyed leaf) in the middle of March, although I could have had them in much sooner if I'd gotten the hoop house ready. This batch I covered carefully with PVC pipe topped with greenhouse film, but by the next week I threw it all off. The seeds had sprouted and although the weather was too cool for me, I knew the leafy crops liked it. I had visions of my efforts to keep my precious lettuces warm resulting in the earliest known leaf crop to bolt in mid-April. Then I'd just look foolish.

Last week, I tilled the garden and worked compost into about half of my rows. I am trying a new system of permanent rows and paths this year, so I applied all of my compost to three foot wide rows and raked the soil off the two-foot paths to make low, hilled planting areas. This is an old habit I probably got from my mother, who would use a hand pushed, wheeled cultivator to "throw up" her rows. I suspect there was a benefit when it came to drainage, and I remember her applying fertilizer in the trenches along each row. When my kids were small, it helped me explain where they could walk and where the plants were supposed to be. Now, I just think I like the way it looks. I plan to mulch my paths with newspaper and straw.

The forecast for later this week is sunny skies and temperatures well into the 60s. I pray that will be the case. There is another truckload of mushroom soil to unload and potatoes to plant. But for now on this gray, 45-degree day, I am inside huddled by my computer, looking out over my garden where signs of spring are everywhere.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde