Good news and bad news, as far as the garden. Some experiments succeed, some fail miserably, and some you just learn from. Timing is everything.
I had big ideas in early spring about starting peppers from seed, and sister Jo Jo supplied packets of six different kinds of pepper seeds as a birthday present in the dead of winter. I made up six flats of seedlings, they were sprouting in the spare bathtub, and things were looking good.
But timing is everything. Those tiny seedlings would need light soon, and temperatures were just starting to rise outside. When it seemed warm enough to harden them off, I placed the flats of seedlings on long shelves beside a shed in the sunniest corner of the garden and started prepping the four beds where the 60-80 pepper plants would go. Optimism was running high.
Did I mention that timing is everything? In late May, about the time I should have been putting those baby plants in the ground, I took off out of town for a week, leaving them to sit in about half an inch of soil, in flats, on a shelf, in the sun. Not what a responsible farmer would do.
The weather warmed up, as it does Memorial Day weekend. Instead of everyday rain, we got everyday sunshine. Perfect for the timely gardeners who paid attention and planted their vegetables. Not so good for the 60-80 seedlings with two leaves each, baking on the shelf in their southern exposure. Hence there will be no pepper harvest this year.
The good news is the strawberry patch is having a banner year. We've been picking berries for about three weeks now, a big bowl full every weekend, with no end in sight. This bounty will end soon, of course, as strawbs are a seasonal phenomenon, but for now it is a treat to have fresh berries every day. Topped with whole milk Greek yoghurt, there is nothing quite like it.
Maybe I'll transplant strawberries in those other beds that were meant for peppers. Maybe the entire garden should be one big strawberry patch, except the part where the llamas and goats get to graze. Or maybe not.
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Sven, I have a large basket full of seed packets, seed potatoes, onion sets, strawbs, and asparagus crowns. Just sitting there. And 8 flats of seeds, mostly tomatoes, that (who?) have been battling with wildly fluctuating temps and the wettest spring in a long while.
And do I even have a brown patch of earth to put them in?
No. No I do not. I have chickens too young to lay, cows too young to breed, and sheep too dear to eat.
Lean times.
Lulu
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