This week I finally got to put some stuff in the ground! My asparagus “crowns” arrived and, in case you’ve never seen one, they look like creepy alien spiders with too many swollen legs. They also looked quite dead. I’ve planted dried-up rhizomes before so I know I should not be too disturbed by this. But, there is always the niggling suspicion that the nursery has suckered you and a little anxiety until the first bits of green poke thru the soil.
I had harsh words with Burpee regarding my asparagus order: At the same time I ordered the crowns, I also ordered various seed packets. The seeds came at the end of January but the crowns did not. I also noticed they had charged the full amount on my credit card. I called them up and was told that I would receive my crowns at the “appropriate planting time for my location, which will be mid-March.” I told the customer service rep that my country extension office felt I should be planting them in February and that I was much closer to being in zone 8 than zone 7a so would they please send my crowns now.
She then stated that the “real reason” the crowns could not be sent was their being frozen in the ground. This was during our exceptionally mild January so I asked if the crowns were in Canada because no where on the East Coast (Burpee is in PA) was the ground frozen.
Then, she admitted that the really real reason was they always harvest the crowns in March no matter what the weather was doing or their customers required. So that brought me to the matter of charging the whole amount when I had only received a partial shipment. We always do that, was her first attempt at an answer. So I then informed her doing so was a violation of Federal mail order regulations; I should not be charged until the goods were shipped. Ah but, she explained patiently, the money is reserving my share of the nursery stock and is therefore a service rendered. I should pass this gambit for back orders on to the mail order company where I used to work.
It was hard not to cancel the order right there and then. In my previous internet research, all the suppliers were either in Canada and couldn’t sell to me or they had minimum orders of 150 crowns. A week later, DH was googling around, looking for something else entirely, when he discovered Rose Gin, a web site so new that its Counter shows fewer than 3000 visitors. They are a store in Henderson, NC selling seeds and plants grown in Garner, NC by a company called Wyatt-Quarles. I always prefer doing business with homies.
I called them up and a regular human being, not a customer service drone, answered the phone on the second ring. I ordered the asparagus crowns for $10 less than Burpee and a ½ pound of Trucker’s Favorite Corn seed for $1.50! The fellow said, you know this corn seed isn’t treated or a hybrid? Yep, I told him, it’s what my husband’s Daddy used to plant and he wants it. Yes indeed, he agreed, it’s the same corn that’s been grown hereabouts for the last hundred years. I like that.
I received the order the very next day and then had the added pleasure of canceling the Burpee order. Of course, we’ll see how I feel in a couple of months if the Rose Gin crowns don’t sprout.
This week, I also transplanted some red cabbage and broccoli because the 9-paks at the Southern States Farm Cooperative were so cheap we couldn’t resist getting a head start. When I add up spending $2 for a Jiffy 12-pak and $1.79 or more for seed and compare it to buying a 9-pak for $3.50 it doesn’t make sense to start my own seed. Except for wanting varieties that the cooperative doesn’t sell.
I also put in the seed for rows of Dwarf Knight and Sugar Snap peas. Right now the rows are only three feet long. Every ten days I will add another three feet until I reach the end of the bed. There are a couple of reasons to stagger plantings: the main reason is harvesting small amounts at a time but it is also insurance against disaster. If a hard freeze or an ice storm settles in and kills the first three or six feet of peas, I won’t have wasted my entire stock of seed and can start again.
Planting seeds and transplants is like working out a geometry problem by drawing in the dirt — literally. Some seeds want to be three inches apart, others need six or twelve inches between them. In the case of peas you need to keep them in fairly straight rows because they’ll need a fence between them when they start to climb. Back in Georgia, I had a plastic part from a furnace filter that was 24 by 36 inches, molded into a grid of one-inch squares. Somehow it got tossed out instead of being packed with the valuable gardening tools. It was a real time-saver. I would lay it on the ground and count the squares for perfect seed placement. Without it, I had to put down rulers in two directions and lay string to mark the pea rows. I miss it so much I feel like buying a filter just for its grid.
When I plant seeds, I always fill the holes over them with vermiculite and pat them down. Besides giving the seed an excellent medium for germination, it also marks the spot where the seed is. If the seed doesn’t germinate, for whatever reason, I know to put another one there. Also, if some tiny green head comes up outside of a vermiculite circle, I know it’s uninvited. It is so much easier to pluck a weed when it’s a sprout instead of waiting to see what it is and having to yank it out.
Covering the beds with tarps finally dried them out enough to till and dry weather is predicted thru the weekend. So perversely, now that I’ve got seeds and crowns and transplants in the soil I have to turn on a faucet to get water on them. This weekend we’ll be making another trip for horse manure and building a frame with hardware cloth to shift the topsoil we already have. That should fill another two beds. Tomorrow I will be putting in seed for collards and spinach.
On the dark of the moon at the end of the month, I’ll put in potatoes, turnips and onions. The moon phases really do seem to matter in the vegetable kingdom. When the moon is waxing or still within three days of full, it’s a good time to plant leafy, above ground plants. When the moon goes dark, that’s the time to plant roots. If I preferred the tops on my turnips, I’d plant them tomorrow but I think I want those purple-topped globes to add to soups and stews so I’ll wait.
One last riff about garden architecture: The hardest work I did this week was justifying the wooden frames around our beds. No matter that I measured and measured again when hammering in stakes and looping twine. Somehow it all wandered — badly. We put in the long boards first, leaving off the ends until after the tilling. So when it came time to put in the ends – surprise! Some of the beds were too narrow and some of them were too wide. I spent a sweaty afternoon yanking up rebar and repositioning boards. A 2″ by 12″ by 12′ board is not easy to move especially when 48 cubic feet of dirt is pressing against one side of it. In every case, I had to pull back the dirt from the side and trench a new channel for the board to be able to re-position it. All the while trying to maintain 24″ walkways between the beds and a 48″ aisle down the center.
I now feel we would have been better off using screwed-in L-brackets at the corners, putting the frames together, tilting them out of the way when we tilled and then throwing them back into position afterwards. I especially feel this way looking at one of the boards that has warped into a bow shape that turns one of the beds into a parabola instead of a rectangle. And somehow, it all didn’t turn out level. It was probably the weight of the digger that settled one end of the garden and tilted the beds downhill. I’m so AR or OC that it seriously bothers me that everything is not lined up dead-on and level. But, at this point, I’m so happy to be growing stuff that I’m like Scarlet, La-de-da, I’ll think about that tomorrow or next year…
I don’t do this for my ego. I look forward to participation, to comments and questions and they have fallen off dramatically in the last couple of weeks. Please participate in this poll…