With so many stories about sheep, you may think we’ve forgotten about the gardens over here at Circle M. Not so! Spring is crunch time for us in both the pastures and the fields (so if you’ve tried to get us on the phone in the last few weeks, you now know why we’ve been slow to return calls!). Even though much of the garden starts in the greenhouse in February, today is a very important day for the gardens in the ground – 2010’s Last Average Killing Frost Date!

Every year is different, and planting dates are somewhat of a guessing game at all times, but garden and climate experts collaborate to help us common people out by making their best predictions each year for when the various areas of the country will be out of danger of having a frost serious enough to kill plants. Garden books, catalogues and websites publish these in the hope that eager gardeners will refrain from planting tender crops in the ground before these dates. We all experience lots of warm days before the danger of frost is past, and the temptation is to pop plants in the ground when it feels good to be outside digging. Last year a friend of mine asked during a warm April week if she could put out the tomatoes and squash she’d started in the house. I advised her against it, but she did it anyway. She lost them all on one chilly night. Then she went to a garden center and bought replacements, planting those a week later. She lost them, too! It’s hard to wait and it’s hard to believe it can freeze at night after the first few 80-degree days of spring. Alas, it takes a while for the weather to “settle,” as they say.

Of course, there is plenty to do and plant in the gardens before that last frost date. Many crops actually like a bit of cold and thrive in that “unsettled” portion of spring. Spinach, lettuce, dill, peas, radishes, carrots, fava beans, turnips, onions, garlic, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts are all growing happily outside at our place right now. Too hot a spring, and crops like spinach and lettuce can immediately “bolt” or go to seed, resulting in a bitter flavor. Broccoli might bloom into yellow flowers, rather than tight green florets. Cabbage will get pointy and burst, cracking all the leaves. So we are quite content here to endure some ups and downs in temperature for the sake of these “cool season crops.”

Lettuce is happy with a slow spring.

Lots of other veggies and flowers need to wait until this Last Frost Day to see the sun, however. Today you can think about planting beans, sweet corn, squash, nasturtiums and cucumbers from seed outside. You might consider transplanting tomatoes and peppers, even. We won’t do any such things in our little valley, though, where the temperature is regularly 10 degrees cooler than the forecast for our town. This morning, in fact, we “potted on” tomatoes in the greenhouse – which means we pulled them from their small cells and planted them in bigger ones to give them fresh nutrients and room to grow. We won’t plant those outside until the first of June, or until we see our nighttime temps regularly staying above 50. In fact, for many folks in our area, Memorial Day weekend is the traditional planting time for “warm season” crops. This week we’ll be starting melons, winter squash, pumpkins and cucumbers in flats in the greenhouse and they’ll probably be ready to pop in the ground right around then, along with the sweet corn we started in tiny cells last week.

A forest of tomatoes in the greenhouse.

On the list for tomorrow: direct-seed beets and arugula, transplant fennel and celery. Yum!