Last Frost on the Farm
It's a day around which our dreams take shape, our calendars fill in, our potted plants move. Predicting the last frost, particularly at altitude, almost feels like a vice, or like playing a prank on your future self. Should we plant the pole beans and see what happens?
It's mischevious, elusive, and central to gardeners' thoughts and plans for weeks if not all year.
Much is happening on the farm this time of year as we've prepared for and perhaps have now looked backwards at our last frosty night. The hoophouse extended our season dramatically, so our warmth-loving plants are off to a great head start for the year. We've been pinching the flowers off of most of our tomato plants to encourage the vines to grow upward so that we can grow peppers and basil underneath them, but the few that we left untouched already have little green fruits.
Cold hardy flowers like bachelor's buttons, snapdragons and stocks went into the kitchen garden over the past few weeks, but this weekend marked the arrival of the celosias— vibrant, fuzzy flowers that look like the comb of a rooster and make colorful teas.
Our kitchen garden is a two-tiered terrace, each level about six feet in depth. We used big logs and the gentle slope of the graveled yard to frame the two terraces, then filled each with a mix of local dirt and compost. I've been planting yarrows and mints along the back edge to hold the grass back — the yarrow is doing an especially good job of it. Strawberries, creeping thyme, lavender, goji, valerian root and echinacia are all perennials here, and each year they fill out more space. Clumps of garlic have also become perennials, and flowering bulbs are the first to arrive along with dandelions in spring. The parsley seems to keep coming back as a perennial too -- we're heading into Year 3 with the same little lane of it.
Strawberry spinach, cilantro, borage, pansies and chard have so far done a good job of re-seeding themselves. Weeding, then, means patience and close observation, selectively pulling what we don't want and letting the garden give direction as to what it will be each year.
I love this wild, co-created space with its spontenaity and diversity.
As I write this, I'm sitting on the patio beside this little ecosystem of plants and bugs and cats. Cooper just walked out from the kitchen to tell me that it hit 33 degrees last night, despite forcasts of mid-forties. Woops!
We survived a close call, having planted out the celosias, some peppers and basil outdoors yesterday. But we've got cover cloth at the ready — as well as plenty of good old fashioned farmers' denial amnesia optimism!
