Spring has sprung

Wait -- huh? Well, it feels that way here. The weather broke yesterday afternoon, and today, many people are putting in their gardens -- the second or third one, after what felt like a seventy-day rainstorm.

The ground at Stony Run is still sopping wet, but the spring things -- favas, potatoes, elephant garlic, kale, and some bok choi and cabbages -- are looking vigorous, and the summer things that are already here -- starts, due to start failure -- have been languishing: tomatoes, eggplant, zuke, and peppers. But they are perking up. Risa has begun putting in beans and corn and winter squash --
-- and some of the beans are up, only four days after planting. Things do want to happen.

Across the creek, she's got more potatoes, some short-season Buckskin beans, pumpkins, winter squash, and more favas.

You can see from the bean pic the technique we've developed for cold, wet soil, which, actually, we do have more years than not, here. We're a deep mulch garden, with layers of cardboard, compost, shredded leaves, straw, and grass clippings. We make a shallow depression in the mulch, drop a handful of our potting soil into the depression, drop seeds on that, and cover with more potting soil. The seeds will sprout above the flooding, and hopefully by the time they root down, conditions will have improved enough for aeration.

Granted, this year was worse than usual. Will we have beans, corn, and squash? Only time will tell.

He gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
-- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels