growing interest

Spring has sprung, and we are well on our way to tending our north eastern climate garden.  My son loves the garden, specifically, he is interested in anything he can eat from the garden.

Each year we experiment with sprouting our own seeds and transplanting them into our garden.  This requires immense patience, some herbs require a two week germination period, while the beloved bean or sunflower showers you with an almost immediate gratification.  My basil – I love, love basil in the garden – is slow, and tender, and finky and takes forever to grow.

Of course, as will everything in life, growing a garden helps you learn about patience, and loss (we almost alway over/under water something), but also of great reward.

This year, we have been trying to be more eco friendly and made our own seedling pots out of newspaper.  Cute little tubes of wrapped paper, sitting together in a metal tray – lovely – until I realized that maybe they weren’t getting enough air, too much moisture isn’t good for them, but by then it was too late for some of them.  It took a recent group of fatalites to learn this. Now we don’t crowd them in the tray.

So, it is still a few weeks before we can fully transplant our tomatoes, cucumbers and basil into the garden…but we are waiting, patiently, earnestly for the chance to get them out and producing.

My son wanted to know when the end of frost was, because he knows that frost is the enemy of our vegetables.  When I stated that it is just a general estimation, and that we have had some frost well into the month of May in previous years, his simple response is that we should talk to mother nature and get her on board with our schedule!  Anyone have Mother Nature’s email?  We have some things we would like to discuss.

Here’s to counting down the days to frost free weather!