Seasons In The Rain: Early-May Garden Update

     Spring is in the air... there sure are flowers everywhere, and yes, I'm redesigning the lyrics to "Seasons in the Sun" to make them fit my current upbeat mood. The first of the poppies are in bloom by the chicken coop, and our early spring crops, which were planted on the 20th of April, are finally sprouting from our hardened earth.  

     In less than three weeks time, we went from the threat of drought and fire warnings on the mountainsides to the north of our home to so much rain that the newly installed 55-gallon rain barrel on our chicken coop runneth over in just a few days.  All that water also caused havoc to literally rain down on the hardened soil of the garden, and along with a quick cold snap that is slowly warming back up, caused many of our seeds to stall (and in some cases float to the surface) instead of sprout.

  

     From weeks of praying for rain, I was now praying that it would stop: if only for a day.  It did... at least for a few hours at a time here and there, and slowly the seeds started to sprout.  The first of our recognizable crops was the buckwheat, which we are using as a cover crop until our "summer crops" could be planted in the garden.  (Even though the "summer crops" generally go in on Mother's Day, as the day was a little earlier than normal this month, they are only now getting hardened on the front porch.)  

     The lettuce, onions, celery, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower is additionally all springing up with vigor, as well as our first attempt ever at hulless oats.  The mangels, sugar beets, parsnips and carrots all have ground disturbance in their rows, but as of yet, are unrecognizable from the weeds.  Then, there's the most stressful of all of our crops: the hull peas.  

     We have certainly been lacking in peas over the course of the last few weeks.  From our freezer, to the garden.  Generally, their wiry shoots break through the soil within a week from planting, but as a week passed, and then two, there was nothing.  No shoots.  No disturbance of the ground.  Nothing.  Yesterday, nearly nineteen days since they were planted, the first of our super-soaked seeds that at one point had floated to the surface during all the rain, were now breaking the soil.  They're about eight inches under the height of our neighbors' peas up the way, but at least they're out of the ground!  

     To say early May weather has been temperamental, and somewhat unseasonable, would be a bit of an understatement; however, as it continues to rain (even now), at least we say that (for the moment), we're not in a drought.  Now if only there could be a few good days of no rain so we can get this grass mowed!  As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, "it's always something - if it ain't one thing, it's another."  Here's to hoping that your weather isn't as temperamental as ours has been as of late.