Cold frosty mornings bring garden woes
This may be the year that breaks me of my compulsion to get my garden worked up as soon as possible and put my seeds and plants in the ground. I know this isn’t exactly correct, but it seemed there for awhile that we had about a dozen frosts in two weeks.
The garden is bad enough, but I have only a handful of viable blooms on the apple tree. The big, old half-wild cherry tree that was in the backyard when we moved here was so full of blooms this year it looked like a giant snowball. I can’t find one cherry on it. My northern pie cherry tree looks like we may get a little fruit from it. It bloomed later than the others.
A couple of weeks ago I shared a picture with you of the snow on my rows of peas. They seem to be none the worse for wear. I had about a dozen potatoes sticking their little noses up through the soil. The 22 degrees turned their beautiful deep green into solid black. Then, they dried up and blew away. Since then I have yet to find one potato brave enough to try pushing a sprout up through the soil.
Just about every morning, I walk out to the raised beds, coffee cup in hand, to see how the garden fared overnight. My onions, which were spotty at first, then picked up a bit, have been stunted. I don’t know a better word for it. They don’t look dead, but they are pretty sad looking and I see no progression over the days. I lost about half of my beets, as well.
And don’t even get me started on my tomatoes. I had six under the towers of water, and they are doing OK. Linda and I took a ride last week over to Broadway and Timberville and walked around with our jaws hung open looking at what seemed like acres of bedding plants and flowers. I decided I would get another six tomatoes and put them in big pots so they could get started, and I would transplant them to the garden later.
The day after our trip, I potted them, using some potting mix, a little peat moss and a bit of fertilizer. Then I had the crazy idea of digging a hole and setting the whole pot in the garden, knowing I could cover them up when the weatherman called for frost. He did just that, about the time I was finished potting them. I got some old buckets and containers and covered them all up. That was the night of the last really hard frost.
Two of them look like they are done for, two are burnt on the top and might survive, and two appear to be OK. I have since moved them, pots and all, to a little cold frame we have beside the house. Why I didn’t do that when I first potted them, I can’t tell you. My mind must have been elsewhere, on surveys or some other foolishness.
Our asparagus bed also seems to be in a deep sleep. Before the last killing frost, about half a dozen stalks had pushed through the ground. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get me salivating. The frost burnt them to the ground. Now, like the potatoes, there are precious few giving me much hope of having some asparagus with my morels.
Speaking of morels, on April 14, I found one tiny dark one, the ones that come out first. I will let you know when there are a few more around. Several years ago when the morels were plentiful and in season, my bride just happened to have a small can of crab meat in the pantry. I had a few large mushrooms, the late, light colored ones. I took some of the largest, cut them in half lengthwise, rinsed and dried them, and put a heaping spoonful of the crab meat in the cavity. I dipped them in an egg wash, rolled them in some cracker crumbs and dropped them in hot, clean oil.
If I were a kid, which I’m not, and I knew how to text, which I don’t, I would put right here a whole page of OMGs. They were so good it is hard to describe them. Yes, there were a few light spices that I used, and Linda had mixed a little something with the crab meat, but I don’t remember all those details, so I had best leave them out. As an old fellow on the Hee Haw TV show used to say, they tasted “something other like glory.”
Assuming my old joints don’t give me too much trouble, I am hoping that I will be able to get out and roam around in the woods this year. If I don’t step on too many snakes or get ravaged by deer ticks, maybe I can find a few morels. If I don’t, well, I will just have to remember how much the Lord has blessed me with in the past, and be satisfied with the wonderful memories.
I hope you are able to get out and roam around in the springtime here in this beautiful little piece of heaven we call Rappahannock. There is no other place like it. God bless.