Yes, you read it right, snow. Well, it is April in Southwest Michigan, I suppose this is the norm. We have frost all the way into May- this year the last frost is predicted for May 5. After that we go into high gear production!
We are already in production, starting seeds in our makeshift hot house (the garage, emptied of all contents except those related to growing). The high tunnel, that Jody picked up at bargain price from Craigslist, has really been amazing. We put in six raised beds with some nice organic topsoil and compost and already we have cucumbers, peas, radish, broccoli, spring mix lettuce and swiss chard coming up!
We had to transplant the squash: pumpkins, acorn, sweet dumpling and black beauty, to peat pots because they were already outgrowing the starter trays. Now they are ready for when it warms up enough to put them straight into the ground! If they all make it, we will have bumper crops of squash later this season.
So, back to the snow. Yesterday it was very cold and it had been raining for several days. We went outside to check on the baby plants to make sure they were warm enough and we realized we needed our winter coats and hats again! After checking on everything we came to the joint decision that we had to invest in a heater for the high tunnel or we might lose the baby plants overnight. So, it was off to the hardware store in the snow!
This morning everything looked just fine and made it through the very cold night. We are glad we decided to get the heater because losing all those plants would have been a big season setback.
Well, I have to get back to the seed plan. I need to make sure we have enough beds to plant the variety of seeds we have planned throughout this season. I am very excited about the chick peas that just arrived!
Cheers!
