Spring Thoughts

 At this time our spring planting is well under way, and some of our crops are making progress.  With some good rains recently the garden is beginning to recover from the devastating effects of prolonged drought from last fall an into the winter. It goes without saying that much depends upon weather. Many of our fall plants were severely damaged by long lasting aphid attacks due to the prolonged warm season and no frost to kill them. 

So far this spring our snow peas, spinach, and potatoes are doing well. Our fall planted onions are showing stress from drought over the winter. Two plantings of carrots failed, due to a hard frost, and the replanted seed didn't come up. While the rain barrels help, rain is still the best. We are grateful for the recent rains, which have helped considerably.

Success with cabbage

In spite of the challenges, a beautiful cabbage.

In spite of challenges from frost and pests, we had an excellent harvest of cabbage, and were able to donate many cabbages to the food pantry.

Our results are due to the care that has been taken to maintain our soil fertility while being observant of pests and applying control measures recommended by our Horticultural Advisers.

Sometimes you have to improvise

Our garden is a work in progress.  This year warm spring weather arrived in February.  It has been quite dry, so we took advantage of those conditions to begin planting.  We have planted a variety of seeds to date.  So far only the snow peas, which were planted first during February, have germinated and started to grow.
The first week of March we harvested our winter onions and started planting more seeds as well as cabbage and broccoli transplants. The next week the weather changed, as a winter storm was forecast to hit on the next weekend.
On the following Saturday we went to the garden and found the cabbage and broccoli plants for most part getting established with some signs of scorching from frost.  We were concerned they would not be hardy enough to withstand the winter conditions in the forecast. We had not foreseen this possibility, and so didn't have any covers available to cover the beds.
So, we improvised by using plastic shopping bags to place over the individual plants, with dirt around the edges to prevent them from blowing away.  During the next five days, we were hit with winter cold and strong winds that dropped the temps into the low 20s.
Fortunately our plants survived under the bags. After we took bags off, we experimented with some home made cloches made from plastic bottles and covers.
The next day the plants under them seemed okay, but we took them off as we were concerned they might get too hot under the strong sun as temperatures were climbing into the upper 50s.
Lesson learned: improvisation is okay, but preparation is better.
Cloches need close monitoring and work better for a back yard garden. We will need to get proper covers to have on hand for the beds.