Veggie plants waiting for transplant.
Is it planting time yet?
Every single year, that is the question I ask myself.
Why? Partly because I want to put my hands in dirt and partly because I am surrounded…by plants. They are everywhere…
This is my office…cum plant nursery.
Yesterday the temperature was 82 degrees; this morning, it’s 42 degrees. The weather seems to be even more capricious than ever and that means planning a planting date is pretty much impossible. The upshot is that this gardener remains indoors with trays of plants crowding the top of her desk and claiming space on the floor.
Plants being burned by the sun.
Well, the plants and I are indoors except when we are both, literally going outdoors, for a few hours, every single day. I put them out in the morning but by 2:30 PM, all of them are back, inside, feeling the burn.
This is the dance I like to call the “hardening off” cha cha!
Veggie transplants baking in the sun.
Hardening off is necessary to move the plants from a controlled environment into the world of wind, sun, rain and changing temperatures. Don’t harden off and your plants will die.
So, for the next 2 weeks or maybe even 3, I will be lovingly, carefully and constantly toting trays of plants in and out of my office door.
At some point, I will have to make a decision to put them in the ground then stand by my raised beds, saying small prayers over their little green bodies.
After all, planting time here in Eastern Pennsylvania is usually early May, the merry, malleable and every changing month of May! So here’s hoping I get my garden in the ground by May 6th and the wind and snow head North for their last blast of winter!
Grow So Easy Organic 