Meadow moon garden

With a tropical hint of spring in my back pocket from a winter trip to Florida, I’m feeling exuberant about gardening. I’ve seen a lemon tree in full flower, humming with bees. Daffodils were popping in mid Virginia. I’m ready for change. I can visualize abundant colorful blooms and tasty edibles, where snow has been all winter.

April is a tempting time to get into the dirt. Soil must be dry before the beds are worked. Drier earth breathes, and plant roots begin to thrive. This spring, I will use seaweed tea for adding nitrogen and minerals to young plants. Nutritious, high-nitrogen tea can be made from nettle or comfrey leaves. Any tea should be given a day or two to brew beyond fermenting. I add some compost to the tea to improve vibrancy of microorganisms in the soil.

As earth dries enough to crumble, mulch can be pulled back, and perennial weeds plucked. I’ll apply a light spread of compost to the beds. I’ll thin rampant spearmint to a narrow contained border.

I plan to build another cold frame and expand the area of the vegetable beds. Enabled by a downed white pine to the east, open space will permit brighter morning rays to reach crests of new raised beds. Hope runs freely, and expanding the garden will evolve step by step.

In late April I’ll plant peas, lettuce, spinach, onion and carrot. I’ll protect these from frost with a row cover, should the mercury dip low. Today’s spear tips of jonquils will green up and shoot above their receding snow blanket. The parade of life, merely slowed by winter, proceeds on, in full, at the only speed it knows.

As gardeners, we want to tend to life, and hope to nurture its spirit of freedom, happenstance and natural affinity within our plantings. Enriched with attractive natives, our beds can bloom with the inherent scent and visuals of place. In this way, a thread of heritage can nurture a positive attitude of perennial longevity.

Gardeners can slow the carbon cycle by sending kitchen leftovers into soil service. As well as composting, gardeners can watch water use, and save runoff for flowers. Crops that can withstand dry periods will be useful during drier cycles. Most climate models predict fewer but more concentrated precipitation events, causing more flooding and drought. I am experimenting with lima beans and melons, both of which like it a bit warmer than it has been here in summers past. I’ve grown both here, and they may do fairly well one year, and better the next. It seems the warming climate may begin to help some longer season and warm-loving crops to fully mature before frost.

Today, sun drew me in for a closer look at winter’s changes in the garden. I found myself spreading bark that is shedding from a fallen maple trunk for bed edging. Lichen sides up, it looks great and will cup earthward, letting in rain. It will last a year or two before becoming soil and needing replacement. Nothing is blooming, but buds of a Montauk daisy are swollen, and rosette bases of snapdragon and hollyhock leaves look green with promise.