As the Garden Grows

I have been so slack in my posting. Probably because there has not been much going on in the garden for too long. We have been having beautiful weather here in the Piedmont of North Carolina since last Friday. This has prompted many bulbs to start blooming and some trees as well. I am hoping that my apple trees will hold off because I know there is another heavy frost coming...maybe as soon as this weekend. I have started tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings inside and they are doing well. I have yet to get out and really get in the dirt because I have been very sick with a crud that doesn't want to let go for going on 3 weeks now. Just when I think I'm getting better, my ears plug up again and the cough just won't go away. It's probably just as well...they are calling for rain and colder weather after today. Many people I know insist on planting early so that they can have tomatoes before July; but most of the time, I rely on my great grandmother's advice that was told to me by my uncle. She said that you should never plant any warm weather crops before May 1st because the soil wasn't warm enough and that if you did your harvest would not be as plentiful; the plantings would be weak and you would have more insect damage. Here where I live we are able to garden well into October most every year and I have had productive gardens still in the beginning of November; so it does make some since. The warm weather plants thrive in the warm soil, they don't like for it to be cool and a lot of the bugs that develop from moth larvae (squash bugs and vine borers come to mind) actually lay their eggs in early spring. In allowing myself that little bit of extra time I have to admit that my garden has done much better. I don't seem to have as many disappointments. Last year my summer squash produced well into fall. I eventually had to pull it up because I had frozen, pickled and canned as much as I cared to. They were becoming baseball bats :~) I cherish this ancestral wisdom not because of the success it has brought me; but because it comes from a fine woman that I never had the chance to meet. I would have been her first great grandchild. I live in the house now, that she once did. I sweep the same floors and prune the same beautiful rose bushes; I use the same garden tools and cook some of her recipes. I can feel her spirit often and feel that even though we didn't get to meet I know her through these things. So, I will be readying the garden beds, tending my indoor seedlings and anticipating the day after the 1st of May when I will tuck them into the warm fertile soil.