OLG Old Lady Gardener #118 Slow steps into the garden

It is a perfect chilly rainy Sunday afternoon. I am sitting in a coffee shop with a hot cup of Chai tea and thinking about gardens. What else would one contemplate on a rainy afternoon in the spring?

The rain is so needed in our area that I just can not complain. I will need to find time to squeeze in garden tasks this next week. Hopefully there will be a few days of sun or at least drier so I can get a few more garden beds weeded and begin some “early” planting.

It is funny how I thought a few months ago when we had no snow that this would be a year when I would have lettuce and spinach early from the garden. I was sure we would have early, early spring peas. Nope. Not happening. Yep, we have had no snow but the temperatures have dropped each night to the 30’s and the ground temperatures have not really warmed to a place that it is worth putting seeds into the ground.

My sunroom is over flowing with plants that are getting larger and larger. I have continues to pot up each of the plants that are in tiny cells. Yesterday I moved what I thought was 24 little plants to find there were 32 of them. If they all make it we will have a garden of colorful wild flowers.

A few of these little guys like the light and warmth they are getting and have begun to set flowers already. This is a first for me – flowering before I plant them outside. The Coreopsis is flowering and a few of the pepper plants, known to be slow are setting flower buds as well. I have been picking them off since I don’t want them flowering and fruiting yet. I would prefer to get them in the ground before all that activity starts. The dahlias are leggy and I need to figure out how to support them and strengthen them before they are set out to deal with the real world of wind, rain and full sun.

The hoop house, which is the next step to going outside, is out on the deck but the nights are still to cold to put plants out there yet. Last year by April 23rd I was putting plants out in this little warming house. It is now the 28th and we are not there yet. We are not far off and the plants inside are much larger than last years plants so I guess you can call that progress. Maybe this week will bring warmer night and everything can go outside.

This has been a year of excitement about the possibility of an early growing season for this northern gardener but in reality we are just about where we are each year. Scanning photos it is hard to tell what year it is since they look so much alike. I have to look for the subtle changes in the photos. A change in a garden bed or a bush that was trimmed last year and was large and now is small is the only way to know what year I am looking at.

In this time of waiting to be outside I realize I should sit down and sort through photos – creating files for each year. I also feel like there are some plants that need to be in groups – like the tulips and daffodils. It would be good to know what we planted each year in each bed. My front tulip bed is now almost all yellow tulips – might be good to change that up for next year.

So here I am a few days from May and the planning stage is still happening.

We will watch the rain, sort photos of tulips, transplant little plants to larger pots hoping to have enough space for them, drink tea and check out what bulbs I want to buy for planting next fall.