Down to Earth

Patiently awaiting the 'last frost' date

Kristin Green
Posted 4/25/16

I’m champing at the bit to dig in and get the garden growing. You too? But if one more person mentions the Mother’s Day snowstorm I must have missed while I lived on the other coast (or …

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Down to Earth

Patiently awaiting the 'last frost' date

Posted

I’m champing at the bit to dig in and get the garden growing. You too? But if one more person mentions the Mother’s Day snowstorm I must have missed while I lived on the other coast (or blocked from my memory for being altogether too traumatic) I might have to raise my voice in protest.

Despite the current post-snow burst of flowers, swelling of buds, and display of pansies at every nursery, most humans I know are having a hard time trusting the weather. Go figure. It’s April, the “cruellest month.” Always a pendulum swing between blissfully mild and downright unpleasant. Rain is one thing. We can deal with that and ultimately be grateful for it. Snow and deep freezes are another. Not that they’re unheard of for April (or May for that matter according to those humbugs with an elephant’s recall). I’m as addicted as ever to the weather forecast; the latest report calls for relatively “normal” temperatures for the rest of the month. (What is normal anymore? And what about May?) They predict nights hovering above freezing and days that might satisfy Goldilocks. Which signifies to me and gardeners everywhere it’s a fine time to plant perennials. As long as we wait for the ground to dry out between typical-April rain (and atypical snow) storms.

There’s hardly anything much worse for the garden than to tread upon or plant in muddy soil. Plants’ roots need oxygen along with water and nutrients and our interference can squash the air pockets so diligently provided by the microbial citizens of soil. Best to wait for the water to percolate and the soil to become “workable” again. By “workable” gardeners and soil scientists everywhere mean that the ground should be slightly crumbly rather than oozing and mud-pie-like when troweled.

There are plenty of other things to do, rain or shine. Take a lesson from the birds and bees: spring is all about procreation. If you have grow lights and a heating mat, and/or a sunny windowsill, start some seeds. I can tell you from recent experience, amethyst flower (Browallia americana) germinates in about a week and Monarda ‘Bergamo’ in a little over two. After three weeks flowering tobacco (Nicotiana) is just beginning to poke up but I’m still waiting for pin cushion flower (Scabiosa). Bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanea), baby’s breath (Gypsophila), and love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) among others, may be direct-sown outdoors now. If you are determined to grow vegetables for yourself and the neighborhood woodchucks and bunnies, go ahead and get in your carrots, peas, spinach, lettuce, and the brassicas (kale, cabbage, broccoli, etc.).

Take advantage of perennials’ growth spurt. Now’s the time to divide and transplant anything but the earliest bloomers. (Fall’s the best time for those.) And why not take cuttings on the rainy mornings? I might not need a baker’s dozen golden tansy (Tanacetum vulgare ‘Isla Gold’) but its feathery new shoots are so ripe for rooting it’s hard to resist filling my Forsythe pot with that many tips or more.

And for goodness sake, don’t forget about your houseplants. Those poor things are busy pushing out new growth too and will want to be watered much more frequently, especially if they’re on a warm windowsill. Give them a little fertilizer periodically too. My chosen course of action for booms in insect pest populations is to hose them off when I think of it and count the days before the birds and beneficial insects outside take over their management.

The Merry Month of May and its flowers will be here before we know it. This part of New England is allocated a “last frost date” somewhere between May 5th and the middle of the month (after the full Flower Moon on the 21st if you want to play it very safe) but I have no recorded memory of a cold snap in May. Do you? (Please don’t tell me.)

Kristin Green is a Bristol-based gardener and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.

Kristin Green

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