Well, we are four weeks to our last frost! Things are really starting to take shape for our gardens. We have several hundred plants out in the greenhouse now. And the serious labor of getting our garden in the ground is about to begin!
We’re starting to think about when we might start our actual outdoor gardens this year! We usually get started with planting about two weeks to our last frost, only for our cold hardy and frost tolerant plants. With how the dates and weekends fall this year, we’re either doing things a bit before or after that point.
We are going to try to prep our raised beds this weekend, assuming the soil is actually workable. That means we’ll do our prep for our fairly large community garden next weekend. We are tentatively thinking we might do the bulk of our direct sows next weekend, following up with cold hardy transplants into our raised beds as we get closer to that “two week” mark. Sometime after that, we’ll be throwing down our community garden and large container gardens.
This is always a bit of a dance to get our plants out! We’re closely looking at our 10 day forecasts, specifically for average overnight temperatures to be in the high 30’s to low 40’s. We obviously have no insight past that point. But, we do know those cold hardy plants can take a cold spell, or even snowfall, if such things descend upon us. This is where that “depth of knowledge” about frosts, temperature tolerance of plants and insight into general weather trends for our area comes in handy!
Do keep in mind that we have to strategize about how to get probably close to 1,400 plants in the dirt! These are Frosty Garden problems! We even take the week off from work for the week before last frost, just to make sure we have enough time to get it all done! If you don’t have nearly as much to do, there’s definitely wisdom in waiting a bit and taking your time. If conditions support it, definitely get your plants outside over the next month (after hardening them off first!) as they’ll appreciate that sunshine!
This is always an exciting point, where we can start getting dirty and start pivoting towards “real” gardening. We’ll definitely be keeping you all in the loop with what we’re doing, as we’re doing it!
