Temps in the high 80’s.

Last week’s weather prediction proved rather unreliable. Daytime temps have been in the low fifties and we barely escaped frost on Saturday night. Sunday night’s prediction was more ominous, so, like Peter, I erected 3 tents. (It is good that I was there.) One each over the tomato and pepper beds and the last over the  heirloom tomatoes. I covered the hot peppers, remaining heirloom tomatoes and zucchini with pots.

Everything survived. I don’t know if I needed the covering or not, but it was worth it for the peace of mind. We are out of the cold snap and temperatures tomorrow are supposed to be in the 80’s.

Planted 5 inch pots of Heirloom Tomatoes from Home Depot. Marion, German Queen and Lemon Boy. I couldn’t find a Mr. Stripey so I have room for one more Heirloom.

Here is the main planting for tomatoes and peppers. Looks like the weather will be frost-free for the week ahead, which will get us up to May 15th so we should be good for the year. All items from Goebbert’s.

Tomatoes:

• 2 Black Krim Heirlooms
• 2 Brandywine Heirlooms
• 4 Big Beef
• 15 Roma, 5 rows, 3 per row

Peppers:

• 4 Hot Hungarian Banana
• 4 jalapeno
• 8 more Valencia
• 4 Lady Bell
• 4 Gypsy
• 4 Melrose
• 8 Sweet Banana

Zucchini

• 2 Hills Spineless Beauty from plants.
• 1 Hill Squash Costata Romanesco

I planted 4 Early Girl tomato plants (1 large from Home Depot, 3 from Goebbert’s and 4 Valencia Peppers from Goebbert’s.

In the Herb Garden, I planted a couple pots of oregano, 3 thyme and parsley.

I also planted the cherry tomato plants by the porch, 1 Sun Sugar and 1 Super Sweet 100.

Last Wednesday and Thursday produced about five inches of rain and delivered a load of topsoil from Greg’s garden (uphill) to mine (downhill). It is sort of like the fertile river deltas that depend on the spring floods to enrich the soil. I did remember to thank him.

We awoke on Friday morning to 1/2 inch of snow on the ground which melted fairly quickly, but it was cold and windy all weekend and the ground was too wet to do much. Most of the greens other than the corn salad are sprouting, but growth is cold because of the cold wet weather.

Kohlrabi, broccoli and collard greens.

Today was sunny and the temperature made it into the upper 60’s, so I stopped at Goebbert’s for some cool weather vegetables which they were just putting out. All of the flowers are still in the greenhouses, but they are open.

I planted kohlrabi, Green Comet broccoli and collard greens in the new plot next to the horseradish. I put pots with the bottoms cut out around the broccoli and kohlrabi to keep away various woodland creatures, but didn’t have enough for the collard greens. Hopefully, they don’t like collard greens.

Kale and mustard green plants in between sprouting seeds.

I put the kale plants and mustard greens between the rows that I seeded earlier this month where the blue kale and chard were last fall. Only one kale plant survived from last year, but I let it go to see what will happen with it.

I also bought one pack of leeks, but I haven’t figured out where those should go yet. I also need to plant snow peas.

The garden in early April.

Another beautiful spring day with temperature in the upper 50’s and lots of sun. I raked the horseradish plot and tried to fill in the holes, also did a little yard cleanup and burned the Christmas wreath and garland that’s been sitting on the deck waiting for a good burn day.

I put flags in the tomato bed to mark locations for the tomato plants so that I could plant rows of greens between them. By the time the tomatoes are going into their growth spurt, the greens will have bolted and be ready to pull out.

Here’s what got planted today:
Asian Altor Greens
D’Avignon Long Radishes
More Lollo Rossa Lettuce
Corn Salad – Verte A Coeur Plein
More Arugula
Strawberry Spinach

I’ve been watering every day as the surface of the soil has been drying out and what I’ve planted is planted near the surface. Starting tonight, it’s supposed to rain all week. We’ll see.

The weather today, Holy Saturday, got up to almost 60, so I was able to get the first planting in. I planted the following in the new bed I built last summer:

Arugula
Corn Salad, Mache-Verte D’Etampes
Easter Egg Radishes
Lettuce Lollo Rossa
Blue Curled Scotch Kale
Spring Raab

Hopefully, we can get some early spring greens this year. I raked around last year’s  Dwarf Blue Kale and Swiss Chard in the same bed and they both had a few green sprouts showing. We’ll see if they come back.

The weather warmed up a bit today after a long and cold March, so I made an attempt to get out at least a few horseradish roots so I could make a small batch of my traditional Easter horseradish.

The south end of the patch was still somewhat frozen, which isn’t surprising as most of it was under snow just a couple of days ago, but the part closer to the walk was soft. They were hard to find as the leaves were just beginning to sprout, and digging in the wet ground wasn’t pleasant. I managed to get about 6 nice roots out.

Between that and the large root I bought at Heinen’s, I was able to make 5 large jars and 7 or 8 small ones. If I have time, I might do another batch after the ground warms up.

Last year we ate St. Patrick’s day dinner on the deck, but not his year. It’s only warming up into the 30’s and piles of snow still remain. There is no warmup in sight, but hope still springs eternal.

I bought a new book by Niki Jabbour last week, The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener. Niki lives near Halifax, Nova Scotia and hosts a weekend gardening radio show there. Nova Scotia is a peninsula that extends from the south of Canada into the Atlantic and Halifax is really only a few hundred miles north of Chicago, so the growing seasons are similar.

Her book talks about methods that she and others have developed to get year-round yields from the garden by proper choice of plant varieties, cold-frames, mulches and other coverings. Based on my good results with Kale this year, I’m really encouraged and interested in increasing the harvesting season. This book explains the whole method.

So, based on information from the book, I’ve ordered my seeds for the year that will supplement the plants that I buy at the nursery and set out in the spring. Here’s the list so I don’t forget next year.

Terroir Seeds LLC – Underwood Gardens

• Cucamelon/Mouse Melon – Miniature Cucumber
• Summertime Lettuce
• Evergreen Bunching Onion
• True Lemon Cucumber

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

• Fortex Pole Beans
• Provider Bush Beans
• Toscano Lacinato Kale
• Magda Lebanese Summer Squash
• Waltham Butternut Squash
• Easter Egg Radishes
• D’Avignon Long French Radish
• Winter Density Bibb Lettuce
• Spring Raab
• Champion Collards
• Altor Asian Greens
• Mei Qing Pac Choi
• Genovese Basil

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

• Red Wonder Wild Strawberry
• Strawberry Spinach
• Perpetual Spinach
• Pepper Cress
• Arugula
• Mache-Verte a Couer Plein 2 – Corn Salad
• Mache-Verte D’Etampes – Corn Salad
• Costata Romanesco Zucchini
• Blue Curled Scotch Kale
• Russian Red Kale
• Lollo Rossa Lettuce
• Japanese Giant Red Mustard

This is quite an ambitious list of vegetables,  but I’ll be planting less of each variety, planting some only for fall crops and inter-planting the spring vegetables between other later maturing crops. We’ll see how it works out.

I need to build a cold frame for the fall and possibly cover one of the raised beds to jump-start the tomatoes and peppers.