A Gardener's Retreat

So Memorial Day is come and gone and so is the last frost date.  But wouldn’t you know, they’re forecasting widespread frost tonight.  That didn’t stop us from planting a whole lot more seeds but it did prevent us from putting in tomato and basil.  We’ve decided to wait until the next astrologically auspicious planting days — June 5 and 6 — to put in the warm season starts like tomatoes and peppers.

That said, we put in a bit of a marathon this weekend with two or three hours each weekend day.  On Saturday, Chris cleared weeds and scythed grass while I prepped and seeded.  I put in cucumbers where the peas didn’t happen, and pattypan squashes in the long bed, nearby the other Sugar Ann snap peas which are the only ones that came up.  We figure by the time the squash are in need of space, the snap peas will be done.  We can just cut the tops to the ground, leave the roots in as fertilizer and let the pattypan take over.

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Today we dug and weeded.  Our neighbors — at the garden as well as at home — are sharing their plot with us in return for clearing, so for the last couple weeks Chris has been digging out blocks of turf and turning them over in preparation for later sorting.  Today, we sorted, pulling lots of grass and grass roots out of the dirt.  It was excellent exercise and got me so jazzed that I spent another half hour or so digging weeds out of the herb garden too.

In our main plot, there has been lots of tiny action.  The carrots are up, in rows between the radishes, and over in the lettuce bed, I’m starting to see sprouts. I’m guessing they’ve been in there about two weeks so I was starting to wonder.  Much more action in the spicy mesclun bed which is mostly mustard varieties, notoriously fast.  And that’s about it for seedlings.  We’re starting to think about the next round which is arugula, kale and more lettuce, sometime in the next two weeks.

Also, I have solved the mystery of the sorrel.  As you may remember, I was surprised to find much further along sorrel growing next door to my cultivated sorrel patch.  It was clearly sorrel to look and taste but it was too big to be my seedlings.  I pondered and could come to no good conclusion until I happened to be walking by an abandoned plot just yesterday where I noticed more of the same sorrel. When I got home, I looked it up in my favorite reference book Weeds Of The Northeast and found that it is in fact, sheep sorrel, a very close relative of cultivated sorrel and one of the ingredients in the Ojibwe anti-cancer remedy Essiac.  I was impressed and transplanted a clump to my own herb corner so I can keep an eye on it. 

No pictures this time.  Everything is too tiny to be interesting at this point, and we were busy weeding anyway.

We stopped by the garden today to see how the workday was going and to check on our sprouts.  Not surprisingly, there were more than last time.  The first of the peas we planted — all of them snap peas — have finally come up.  They’re barely above ground but on their way.  

The spicy asian greens we planted have come up as well, but none of the lettuce.  What has me scratching my head is the sorrel.  The sorrel we planted is just starting to come up — tiny seedlings right where we planted them.  But a few feet away, uphill from the patch I planted, is a fully formed clump of — you guessed it, sorrel.  I did not plant sorrel there (in the middle of a dead kale plant).  And it’s much bigger than the sorrel I did plant.  Moreover, I have never planted sorrel before.  But I tasted it and it’s sorrel all right.  Now where did it come from?  

For the curious, here it is:

Sorrel Sprouts