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.

 

Went down to the garden today after work. It was glorious, these first days of spring with the honest sweat on my forehead and the rich smell of dirt. I have hopped down twice since my last post, stealing a half hour or so each time. AJ and I exchanged greetings - he's a new gardener, but I know him from long ago, another place and time. He was concerned about whether he would be too late getting in his peas. The plot he inherited was quite a mess. It had been abandoned last year by a gardener who had health problems. AJ was thinking that just preparing it for planting would keep him occupied for quite some time. He despaired a bit of getting a harvest until late in the season. I told him that's what radishes were for.

I assured him that it was a gardener's nature to feel behind - I had sworn that I would get my peas in earlier -  but that he should be encouraged to know that one of the best windows of planting was between August 1 and September 15. Last year we brought the salad and roasted vegetables to Thanksgiving dinner, fresh from the garden and the result of late summer planting.

That brings me to the photo I closed my last post with. It was planted at the end of September, it will be my first harvest. It's mache, or corn salad, a green common in Europe, but less well known here. I met a farmer from Columbia County last year, who grew it in her winter hoophouse. She said she sold it to the chefs in NYC for $30 a lb. 

The garden has given me some pleasant surprises already. Arugula and mizuna that I kept under row covers all winter long have emerged alive in the spring and ready to go. Onions that I planted for a fall crop of scallions never quite got it together for fall, but seem to have overwintered fine in the open garden. I am hoping for nice scallions by the middle of May. And today I noticed a small radicchio plant that somehow made it through, I will pamper it and see if its inclination will be to go to seed or make a head. I don't know if it is from a seed that did not germinate last fall or some piece of plant that survived the snows.

Since my last post I planted another flight of spinach (variety unknown) the radish 'Champion,' escarole 'Broad-leafed Batavian' and kohlrabi 'Purple Vienna.' All of them were planted in blocks, rather than rows, on 4/14. It will be interesting to compare production of Spinach under the two circumstances, my first Spinach crop was planted in three tightly spaced rows. I think that first crop of spinach is just coming up, the lettuce certainly is. The peas, well, with the peas I was a bit impatient. I dug about in one of the rows until I found a pea seed. I had to find out how they were doing. It had sent out its first long root, the one that settles down before the shoot reaches up to the light. When it reaches 60 or 70 on Friday afternoon, my peas will be out soaking up the rays!  

Working

Let's do it. The point of this thing, I've worked in the garden twice now. With my digital camera there can even be pictures. This first one was taken during a visit in March. 

It's the nature of gardening to feel behind and already I feel like a couple weeks are lost. I wanted to have my peas in for weeks - at least I got them planted today, as well as setting out some arugula started from seed a month ago (3/3 it has only been lingering and really was ready to plant two weeks back). I hope it gets some size to it before the flea beetles are out. Flea beetles in this garden are not nuisances, they are menaces, last year they outright killed some cabbage sets and turned two summer plantings of rutabagas to dust. I will have plenty of chances to talk about pests in the future, so let me turn to more pleasant things. 

On Monday (3/7) I planted a triple row of spinach (Melody) next to my garlic, as well as a split row of lettuce - half Buttercrunch and half Red Sails. The Red Sails is lovely, but no comparison to Buttercrunch in flavor. I hope to get two or three spring spinach plantings; lettuce will be almost continuous from now until November's last harvest. I will probably trial about ten different lettuce varieties. I have two other red varieties already started inside, one leaf and one romaine. Because I figure such a short window of opportunity for the arugula I planted it alongside and between my 10' double row of Sugar Daddy Peas. I know nothing of Sugar Daddy, except I assume its a sugar snap type, not a shelling pea. Maybe I will go onto Vegetable Varieties, one of my favorite websites, to check it out.

So far between cleanup and planting I have spent about an hour and a half in the garden. On Monday I pruned my raspberries, cutting the canes down to about 18." This means I will lose my summer crop, but they should make up for it in the fall, when the fruit is less bothered by bugs anyway. Hopefully it will keep them a little more out of my way during the growing season as well, since they will be starting off a little smaller. I am lucky with the berries, because they came with the plot and are grandfathered in. CDCG doesn't allow people to plant raspberries anymore because they have a tendency to take over. There are several plots here at Ridgefield, which is an old garden, that are completely covered with raspberries. Indeed, last springtime I was forced to defend my own borders with a sharp spade to keep out the encroaching runners of neighbor's berries. Fortunately, it didn't take much effort to keep them at bay after they were thrown from the ramparts the first time. 

There are a few things besides garlic and raspberries left in the garden from last year. Here's a picture of one:

 

WHERE

In Upstate New York, where the Mohawk and Hudson River converge there are a cluster of cities. Small by today's standards, they combine to make a metropolitan area of about three quarters of a million people. But they are old, Albany will soon be celebrating its 400th birthday and Troy, well Troy is the place where Henry Hudson turned around. Schenectady is the third of the triumvirate, the city that light made. A range of other cities fill the spaces in between: Waterford, Cohoes, Watervliet, Green Island, Rensselaer, each shaped by the industry that made them strong and the ethnic groups that defined them; each made rich by the power of water and what it carried.

For a hundred years they have been on the downside, except for Schenectady, which was made mighty by electricity, its downfall was more precipitous and recent. In each, stately homes were abandoned for new ones in the suburbs. Rich farmland was covered with split level ranches and absurd 12-room show homes with multiple rooflines. Neighborhoods in Albany's center can have poverty rates 10 times those of Delmar, a suburb just several miles away. A vigorous wave of urban homesteading in the early 80's stabilized some of Albany's neighborhoods, but that seems a long time ago. In other cities, Troy,  Schenectady, Cohoes, the revival was more recent and seems to be continuing.

My garden is in the City of Albany, in a pleasant neighborhood of tree-lined streets. Many of the buildings nearby have been cut up into apartments for students, although this is probably the healthiest part of town, in terms of home ownership.

In terms of gardening, we are well within Zone 5. Frosts end sooner here and begin later then they would if we were outside of town, but because the garden is located next to the large open area of a park, the first frost struck my garden a little sooner than it did at some of the smaller gardens immediately surrounded by buildings. 

Our CG is pretty big, about a half acre in size I would guess. There must be 30 or 40 garden plots, farmed by couples, families and friends. It is difficult to know all of my fellow gardeners. I did not attend our spring clean up last year, which is a great way to become acquainted, because I had to work. My lovely wife represented us instead. This year I will make it.

Another constant of the gardening year, where fellow gardeners mingle, is at sign-ups. Each returning gardener is required to reregister their plot and pay their yearly fee. I did that last week. To my surprise the fee was $15, not the $20 I mentioned in my first post. What a deal! An added bonus is the free seeds, with a great selection of vegetables and flowers to choose from. I made an order from FEDCO for some seed potatoes and onions a few weeks back, because they are something you can't count on from CDCG. I got great seed garlic from the organization last fall, which I am excited about. This will be the first time I have grown either potatoes or garlic.

Returning gardeners can keep their plots, or they have first choice at new plots that have opened up elsewhere. Sometimes people want to get a sunnier plot, or even move out of the garden to another one closer to their home. Some gardens are quite popular and difficult to get into. Gardeners' may have to wait several years to get the perfect location.

Next comes new gardener sign-ups, untimely covered, under the posting of WHEN