Middle Tennessee teases Spring throughout much of March and April.
Last night was a low of 35F, bestowing frost upon any low-lying areas and causing intrepid gardeners who may have rushed to plant out warm-weather vegetables to rush around with frost cloth, buckets, etc. to protect tender foliage. It will barely hit 50F in the aftermath today, but it will be in the high 70s most of next week.
Live here for a year or two and you will become aware of the particularity of Tennessee's “little winters.” They are given charming names such as “Blackberry Winter” or “Dogwood Winter” and are not made-up things, despite sounding like an old wives’ tale.
Tennessee has a long history of agriculture, and those early farmers had to observe nature closely. Their livelihood relied on planting at the right time to avoid losing young crops; they couldn’t get advice from strangers on Facebook. The trends they noticed were real:
“Scientific” farmers also kept journals noting the weather and other phenomena, allowing them to increase their harvest and their income. The small blips they observed in the shift from winter cold to summer heat revealed noticeable fluctuations that happened year after year. Called “singularities” in weather parlance, to be recognized, a singularity has to occur during at least 50% of years. Blackberry winter is a long-established singularity.
All this is to say, though the official last frost date in my area is April 15th, my greenhouse will remain packed with warm weather annuals until sometime between then and Mother’s Day (depending on how the 10-day forecast looks).
There is no reason to rush to put out warm-season vegetables like tomatoes and peppers until the nights have truly warmed; they don’t like cool soil and will sit in the ground sulking until conditions are more favorable.
This will be our 4th year gardening here. The first years in a new garden are always an adventure: you don’t know the soil, the sun, the microclimate, or the pests. What grew well for you before may now struggle, and conversely, things you could never grow suddenly thrive. You try new things and record the successes and the failures.
But by the third or fourth year, every good garden starts to hit its stride. The bigger projects get done, there’s more time, and you can make the little adjustments to what and how you’re planting that have a big impact.
So in the spirit of that, here are a few of my garden goals for the year (feel free to borrow some of them for yourself):
1. Plant more things, closer together.
I always seem to give plants in my raised beds too much room and the bare spots of dirt become a vacuum that the weeds are all too eager to move into. This year, I am planting slightly closer than the seed packs recommend, popping lettuces into corners I know will be shaded later by taller foliage, and adding more flowers to fill any gaps. I’m hoping this translates to fewer weeds and more things to eat.
2. Practice better succession planting
I love a good salad, and every year I start a few head lettuce in the greenhouse and plant them out when it’s warm enough. Naturally, in a few weeks, they all mature at roughly the same time, and I have more lettuce than a household can consume at once. The chickens are always happy, but I’m always sad because then there are no more lovely lettuces.
So this year, I’ve managed to sow a few batches over the last month or so along with some sown a few directly into the ground. I’m doing the same thing with peas, green beans, and even batches of corn, all with the hope that I can have a more staggered harvest.
3. Intentionally trial different varieties
One of the joys of growing from seeds is that you have so many more varieties to choose from than what’s available in your local garden center. Last year, I discovered a cherry tomato variety that performed vigorously in our garden and is delicious. I am, of course, growing it again this year and probably always will (see below):
I have not, however, found a good slicer tomato. The varieties I’ve tried over the last couple of years just didn’t thrive and produced just a handful of tomatoes. So this year, I intentionally purchased four different slicing tomato varieties to try. I’ll grow one plant of each variety and see how they do. I’m doing the same thing for peas and squash.
4. Grow more basil
I think basil is one of the best herbs you can grow - delicious on pizza, in pasta, or turned into pesto, it’s one of the joys of the summer garden. I never seem to remember to sow it from seed, so I always pick up a pack from the garden center and then have just a few plants in the garden. It’s never quite enough to make a big batch of pesto from though, so I’m always slightly disappointed. This year, I’ve started multiple varieties from seed and will cram the plants into every corner. If I don’t use it all, I can count on the pollinators to enjoy the flowers.
Other garden things:
It wasn’t on purpose, but I read Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard followed by North Woods by Daniel Mason. Both featured apples in starring roles and both were rather good.
I’m ordering a lot more plants online these days. We have good nurseries around here, but I like collecting more unusual specimens that just aren’t available locally. I’ll share some of my favorite online nurseries next time.
“Field Notes from Woodside Gardens” is a collection of stories about creating a garden. Most Fridays, I share what’s going on in our garden along with tips and ideas that you can use in yours, wherever you are. Please consider becoming a free subscriber if you haven’t already.