Peepers. I heard them the last few nights. Busy doing what they do best in spring, finding each other.
Peepers are little frogs that live by small bodies of still water, also know as ponds. I don't really understand the biology completely, but I believe they burrow into the mud in the winter and then emerge when nighttime temperatures are warm enough to allow them to pump blood effectively. They have a distinctive chirp that is relentless and drones on all night. It's somehow intoxicating.
Peepers out and about means it's time for me to get my garden growing. About a month ago, I got out my rototiller and churned up my garden, the first step in preparation. Also over the course of a few weeks I started six flats of tomato and pepper seeds. Each flat has 72 slots and I generally try to plant two seeds per slot. That's a possible 864 plants. Out of that possibility, I probably have about 550 to six hundred baby plants right now. Ironically, I'll only use about 30 tomato plants, and about 30 pepper plants. I'll sell and give away the rest.
I have all kinds of tomato and peppers growing. Soon, I'll have my annual catalog posted online so people can view my stock to place orders. This year, I moved my grow lab to my basement family room. So now, I don't expect the police to be as suspicious of my high intensity light system that stays on all night as they were when I used to keep the grow lab in my dining room. It's always been kind of fun watching cars slow down to try to figure out what those strange lights are coming from my house. I was initially worried that having the seeds started in the cool basement family room would cause me to lose some germination, but they seem to have sprouted well. I am struggling with giving them the right amount of light.
A couple of weeks ago, I started a row of Black Seeded Simpson loose leaf lettuce, and it's coming along nicely. I'm probably about two weeks away from first cutting. At the same time, I dropped in 10 asparagus roots. I had a small, mature patch, but I love asparagus so much, I wanted more. This past weekend, with the peepers encouraging me and the moon waning, I decided to go ahead and put in my main spring garden. I started with five pounds of kennebec potatoes. Once quartered with solid buds, they yielded about about four ten foot rows. I also put in a couple of rows of sugar snap peas, radishes, carrots, and more loose leaf lettuce. Deer Tongue, Pinetree Mix, and New Red Fire were several of the varieties I used.
Hopefully the garden will really take off this year, but I am leery about the long term weather forecast around here. We've already seen signs of drought. Rainfall has been sporadic so far and the subsoil structure is very dry. It won't take much in the way of heat/sun combination to suck away all life.
Global Warming.
1 comment:
No peepers yet in upstate New York - maybe next week (last year it was May when they made their presence felt). So much noise from such small bodies. No real gardening around here until at least May. Note: the four seasons of the Adirondacks are shovel, mow, rake, shovel.
diane
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