I try to keep reminding myself of this, but its really being tested these last few weeks. The frustration of letting my garden slowly fill with weeds as I wait for the weather to break long enough to get the tractor in there is frustrating to say the least.
I had thought about planting 2 weeks ago but that seemed early as we usually get one more good frost after Mothers Day so I waited. Now with all the rain we've gotten (lets not forget the mosquitos) its been just too soft to safely get any equipment out there. So I'm stuck in a holding pattern, like many of my fellow midwestern gardeners. We're all just waiting idle. Reading about the folks in California and the Carolinas are not helping anything when they talk about how they've already pulled out their canners. Then I remind myself the Carolinas have things like fire ants, and the ability to start canning in May is SOO not worth fire ants. And California? Do I need to say more?
The good new is my one giant pumpkin that I wasn't sure was going to pull through given the very damaged first 2 leaves it put up is showing hints of a 3rd! I figured it was going to slowly die given its lack of any new growth, but this 3rd leaf has given me hope. I only started 2 giant pumpkins this year anyway I didn't want to be saturated with giant pumpkins, but the thought of going into this summer with only 1 was making me a bit nervous. Note for the future plant at least a 3rd one so I'm not so concerned about it. I've got at least 6 or 7 carving pumpkins too so we should have a nice little patch to pull from come Halloween for all the kids in the family.
The giant pumpkins and my Adirondack Blue potatoes are the only oddities that I planted this year. No purple sweet peppers, or chocolate varieties. I really wanted to do some different tomato varieties but I didnt get a trellis built due to my garden running north and south this year to give me more room for more different types of plants. I may go east/west next season after taking stock of our production and make changes. If thats the case then Ill put in a trellis and grow some indeterminate tomatoes. So no black, pink, yellows, or green tomatoes either. Its a pretty standard year for us with Early girls and Better boys with a row of Romas too.
I saw some Yellow Brandywine tomato tomatoes at Flower Day that were started by the Hometown Harvest Organics folks calling to me pretty intensely but the lack of a trellis kept me from picking them up. I got their card and will be contacting them about next season to some different tomatoes to try. Id rather buy a bunch of different transplants and put those in to decide what we like so I'm not giving up a lot of space to tomatoes that to us are so-so in flavor or are really difficult to get good maters from. I love to garden but its also about production for us.
In any event with the weather supposedly pretty nice this weekend I hope we can knuckle down and get things started. They are all busting out of their pots and ready to go. Everything but the beans, but I've got faith those will do fine once they hit the soil.
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