Gardening

While I have the time this morning (it is raining, and Jeffrey is occupied with Grandma Laurie), I can show you our garden plans and progress this year. For obvious reasons, Gwen is less able to garden this year, so I'm in charge. It's pretty sad for someone who's career is in plant genetics and molecular biology, but I've never really done any meaningful gardening. That's changing this year though. This spring I'm growing a bunch of cool season crops: radishes and spinach went in on April 3. They are both doing well. Radishes will probably be ready as early as the first week of May. Some different lettuces carrots also were planted, in two waves. One on April 11, the other was yesterday (April 24). All of these should have some frost resistance - the radishes and spinach certainly haven't minded the numerous light frosts we've been having down here over the last few weeks. Lastly, for now, we planted some bush-type green beans and some snow peas yesterday. These have some frost tolerance, but I'm hoping that our frosts have mostly passed by now. The forecast for the next few days is cool and rainy, but no nights with frost. Statistically, April 23rd is the 50% day in State College .. based on past years there's a 50% chance that the last frost has occurred by then. The 90% mark (which I think is typically, but incorrectly, referred to as the last frost date) is May 11.

Jeffrey helped yesterday dig some rows and plant some seeds. You can see pictures at this Picassa Gallery


Because I'm a type A personality, I drew out the garden plan on graph paper. .. here it is!



I'm looking forward to getting the first salads out of the garden in late May or early June. Later on, Jeffrey and I will also plant some more giant sunflowers. We had fun with those last year.

all for now.. mike