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A couple of years ago, a warm spring tempted me into planting part of my garden early. My experience in that episode was very disappointing.
I learned my lesson. So, this year I've planted even earlier.
I just couldn't stand it. I had to get into the garden. The thermometer hit 84 on Thursday. If this is global warming, I'll all for it. Florida weather without the sand, chiggers, palmetto scrub and half-naked old people.
Sweet corn hybrid seed needs soil temperatures of 60 degrees to germinate, which surely we had last week. I planted three rows. I'll have corn before anybody! I planted snow peas and sugar snap peas, lots of them. I never get peas in early enough, but this year I sure did. Cooler weather coming? Peas love cool weather.
I sowed a short nursery row of kale and a half-row of beets. Both will be thinned and transplanted when they're big enough. Kale seed especially is so small it's impossible to space it when planting. Kale is cold-hardy, and beets will be OK if it's a frost and not a freeze.
I planted a whole row of potatoes, half white and half red.
Our family still treasures the story of Susan Grace, a friend of my sisters, in her first experience of helping plant a garden. She couldn't understand why we were cutting up potatoes to plant.
"They're already potatoes!" Susan quite correctly pointed out.
The Pontiacs I put in are new from seed. The Kennebecks are the runts left in the bottom of the bucket from last season, only one year from being bought as seed. I had been planting from saved potatoes for too long and passing along a scabby skin condition in the process.
"Why don't you put in a few peppers?" my wife asked. "You can put a bucket over them when they predict frost."
I had thought about it, but didn't want to overstep my authority. Starting the vegetable and flower sets from seed is her domain.
Most of her sets are 'way ahead of schedule. Honey starts them on tables in the house, in front of big windows and under fluorescent grow lights that I bought from a head shop in Cranberry, and that it is my job to hook up. She keeps the seed trays watered by setting them in big, rectangular, aluminum pizza trays bought at the Rogers auction. That's another story.
She gave me two each of sweet banana peppers and a new variety, to us, called snacking peppers. They are promoted as sweet, multi-colored and banana-shaped. The pepper plants grew so fast that they were already in pots and six inches tall. Again, it must be the warm weather.
The banana pepper seed is new, even though we had leftover seed. The reason is that last year there was a jalapeno seed in there, and all the banana peppers near the jalapeno were hot. Supposedly different kinds of peppers won't cross in the flower/fruiting stage, but that must have happened.
I would have liked to put in a few tomato plants, but Honey has just planted the seed because they always get ready too soon and are leggy by the time we plant, so that we have to bury half their length in the ground.
Honey started our favorite varieties: big Amish paste, pink girl, Brandywine pink, Cherokee purple, several cherry types, and "bus garage Italian." A friend who is a school bus driver, Rebecca of Sunnybrook, passed along some sets she was given from a guy at the bus garage and we grew some last year: huge, red and odd-shaped with good flavor. I'm not sure whether the tomato was Italian or the guy was Italian, but as far as we're concerned the tomato is "bus garage Italian."
When the cabbage and broccoli sets get big enough I'll put them in, but the green beans, cucumbers, zucchini will wait until around Memorial Day or the weekend before. I'll stagger three or more plantings of sweet corn 10 days or so apart.
Starting the garden early is a commitment to extra cultivation work, because I won't lay the plastic mulch rows until just before we plant pumpkin seeds the first of June.
Ah, well, I have good tillers and sharp hoes, and if I stay healthy enough to do the work, we'll find out whether my gamble on an early garden pays off.
(Fred Miller's third book of stories, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave." is $10 and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, Connie's Kitchen restaurant, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)