Gardening Rambling
I don't know if it's a testament to Salanova lettuce, a trait of lettuce in general, or a gardening miracle, but it looks like all, or almost all, of my 47 lettuce plugs survived last week's high winds, freezing temperatures, snow, hail, and freezing rain. Only one looks like it's going to whither to nothing, and I even give that one a 5% shot of survival. There are about 15 others that show signs of wear, but they should make it. The rest look pretty good.
Lots of compost hauling yesterday from the field to my yard, where I am preparing flower beds from scratch. When I paid the bulldozer to scrape my new field, he left the scrapings in piles around my field. Over the past 12 months, the piles have decomposed, leaving big mounds of very good--not great, but very good--compost. I'm guessing I have over 100,000 pounds of compost out there. Marie and I used my brother's truck to haul about a ton of it back to my yard.
Unfortunately, the compost mounds are eroding fast. I was keeping the grass and weeds from growing on it (by tarping and burning) so they wouldn't blow weed seeds on to the field, which no doubt contributed to the eroding. I'm going to let the back half "grow wild" this year, in hopes that it'll slow the erosion.
I saw on the Weather Channel that the midwest east of the Mississippi is expected to have a cool May, an average June, and a cool July. I have a ton of tomato seedlings coming up. I'm hoping we can get them in the ground after danger of frost passes. I remember a few years ago, we were getting frost warnings Memorial Day weekend. If that happens, my first attempt at growing tomatoes commercially is going to fail miserably.
