Went to the garden today after work. It was well hot. I brought my 5-gallon bucket along, filled with water. I understand that climate change is not expressed in one hot day or another, but this is the second April in a row with excessive heat and little rain. I noted in my journal last year the thunderstorms of early May. The weather predicted them for tonight. It has been two weeks now in the 70's and 80's with no rain, two weeks going on three. I'm not saying... I'm just saying.

I was raised here in Upstate with the understanding that the last frost date was May 15th and that planting the "hot" crops should wait till Memorial Day. Thunderstorms are supposed to wait till August. I saw tomatoes from Georgia at a big box store over the weekend and I was tempted to plant one. It might be nice to have tomatoes by the Fourth as some recompense for the destruction of the entire ecosystem.

Now that I am sufficiently farmer-like, with my bitching about the weather, let's get to the crops and the planting. I visited the garden Sunday evening (to water) and to (optimistically) plant more cool weather crops. I planted Beets, (Wodan) onions, (Long white bunching, which noted on the packet that I could plant in fall to over winter{ guess I forgot that!}) and Long-Standing cilantro. The cilantro, like the onion, was from last year's seed. The cilantro I planted last year in late summer didn't bolt even when the snow came. I hope it will perform as well in the hot weather, since cilantro usually passes all too quickly to coriander for me.

I have no hope for my crop of kohlrabi, because Sunday marked the arrival of the flea beetle. The arugula, which had finally settled in from transplanting, was completely subsumed in them and close to death. The radishes are pockmarked and tonight I noticed the mache was covered with a fine black dust -  hundreds of tiny flea beetles. I tried to take a picture, but my camera was not up to the task. It's time to pick the mache anyway, the heat has made it begin to go to seed and I want to make my first harvest.

I planted my onion sets (Red Baron) tonight from the Fedco order, but that's for another post, because I want to talk about my potatoes. When I was leaving another gardener turned on the spigot and water poured out! I rushed to the shed and pulled out a hose. The water is on! My seedlings got more than survival rations for the first time in weeks. Now, if it would only rain.