Early spring spinach
We're on the cusp of the growing season here in southeastern Ohio, the time when even seasoned gardeners will be lulled into planting something by a week of warm, sunny days. I've already visited the garden with seeds in hand. I justified planting the second day of March by the fact that the seeds were several years old and free. If nothing is gained, neither is anything lost. In fact, something was already gained — a few delicious hours messing around in the dirt and sun.
The seeds were a gift from a fellow gardener who was purging the buildup of years of overly enthusiastic seed ordering. In went lettuce, tatsoi, bok choy, and spinach — cool weather crops best grown in spring and fall. A big advantage of fall growing is that the weather is cooling as the greens mature, often extending the harvest well into fall. I got lucky with the spinach pictured above, which survived winter and is again producing.
I'm a sucker for blue-greens
When planting cool weather crops in spring, on the other hand, I'm in a race with time. The typical scenario is a month or two of perfect growth, then a spell of scorching heat and a disappointing harvest. I've witnessed lettuce and spinach bolting, and broccoli and cauliflower languishing, and the sudden unhappiness of peas, enough times that I've come to expect this outcome. This doesn't stop me from trying though.
Hazelnut catkins
This abrupt switch from spring to summer is perhaps an idiosyncrasy of this valley, with the last frost and the first day above 90° sometimes occurring within days of each other. Living in a place long enough to notice things like this makes gardening much easier. You can look up guidelines for your particular zone, but nothing beats the knowledge gained from experience.
There are many old saws that supposedly hold truths about spring and planting lore, that the first robin heralds the arrival of spring being a common one. Robins overwinter here and are a common sight throughout the season, a fact which should bring into question other maxims. One often hears that corn should be planted when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ears. For the home gardener planting sweet corn, this advice might make sense, but here in the Valley commodity corn growers are likely to make their decision based on rainfall more than anything else. If fields dry out before leaves — or the calendar — say it’s time to plant, they will probably take the chance, or risk the next opportunity arriving too late in the season.
Snowflake-like structure of crabapple lichen
Planting potatoes on St. Patrick's Day is advice I've heard many times and I'm convinced it originated in Ireland where it probably makes sense. Here the day arrives a full two months before the last average frost date, making for odd timing for planting a frost-tender crop. Foliage that emerges before freezing weather ends will be blackened. Because the seed potato has reserves of stored starch, it will keep sprouting until it succeeds, so a good harvest is still possible. I wait an extra month to avoid this waste of energy, and while I don't know if I get a bigger crop this way, I feel much better about the whole process.
New obelisk has taken up garden residence
One crop we’re absolutely inundated with is eggs, with close to eight dozen in the fridge, despite losing two hens to hawks in the last few weeks. Red-shouldered hawks with their echoing screams are common here, but they only occasionally bother the chickens. Floods seem to increase their presence, and I deduce from this fact that they spend much of their time patrolling the rich riparian zone. When high water displaces them from their preferred hunting grounds, the barnyard becomes appealing. Incidentally, the belief that black chickens will deter hawks did not bear up, since one of the chickens killed was a black Australorp.
Another factor that doesn’t seem to be affecting egg levels is rats setting up housekeeping near the hens. These rat tenants spent the winter in the barn, and small, squeaky voices indicate the family is expanding. We had rats once before, but they disappeared after a short stint, which I chalk up to the timely arrival of predators. My son has reported that he recently saw rats cavorting in the barnyard in broad daylight. This isn’t typical behavior for nocturnal creatures, and my hope is that something was making them uncomfortable in the den. Soon hungry rat snakes will be emerging from their winter hibernacula, and I expect them to make quick work of the rodents, if something else doesn't get to them first.
View out the back window
The one positive effect of rats in the past was the sudden absence of mice. I know this doesn’t sound like a great trade-off, but we have to find the bright side where we can. I assume the rats were bullying the mice to the point they fled, or eating all the food, or consuming the mice themselves. At any rate, mice were rarely seen once the rats took up residence.
Not so now. Mice have been observed frequenting the same area as the rats and appear to be using the same paths and bolt-holes. Is there a truce? Have they stuck a mutually beneficial deal? Have the rats enslaved the mice? I find this last explanation to be the most plausible. I would be only slightly surprised to discover a rat with a riding crop directing a squadron of mice transporting an egg from nesting box to to rat tunnel. Rats are highly intelligent and we shouldn't underestimate them.
This morning we woke up to snow flurries and a large silver maple down in the pasture. Though covered with flowers and appearing to be full of life, its base was revealed to be rotten. Who knows how long it stood on the edge of life, producing leaves, flowers, and seeds, and withstanding winds much stronger than the gust which took it down.
The bright sides in this instance? It didn't fall on anyone. It didn't take any fences down with it. It left just enough room for the horses to pass by. We might get some firewood out of it, and if not it will become a pilated woodpecker magnet. All good things. I'm looking forward to many more as we ease into spring. I'll keep you updated.
As someone who just sits in my storage-room studio tap tap tapping on my keyboard and only go outdoors for the occasional urban tramp-around, I’m thrilled to read about what sensible real-world-nature-connected people are up to. This blog is helps me immensely with discovering how out-of-it and disconnected from natural systems I really am. I enjoyed ALL of this but here are a few thoughts that occurred as I was reading...
"In fact, something was already gained — a few delicious hours messing around in the dirt and sun." That’s how I feel too, except I have nothing useful to do there and if people saw me acting like this at my local park they'd probably report me.
"One often hears that corn should be planted when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ears." This must be why I’ve never gotten around to planting any corn. Question: Do oak trees in Ohio have very small leaves, or is it that the squirrels are as big as cats?
"I would be only slightly surprised to discover a rat with a riding crop directing a squadron of mice transporting an egg from nesting box to to rat tunnel. Rats are highly intelligent and we shouldn't underestimate them." You've rocked my world. I throw up my hands. I’m been living in this gloomy writer’s den too long. I stand up on my shaky legs. It’s time to go outside!