Memorial Day in the US is always the 4th Monday of May. As such, it can fall up to a week earlier or later from a date perspective. Nevertheless, here in the northern part of the country, the weekend is used as an unofficial start of the outdoor season, for camping, boating, or just barbecues and gatherings. Many gardeners also use it as a reference for planting their warmer-weather crops. But since we had such warm weather earlier, a lot of people went ahead and planted well before the weekend, myself included.
Boy, I regret it now. On Friday a cold front settled,
bringing rain and very cold temperatures. Saturday only reached 47 F. (8.3 C.).
We even had to light the wood stove to warm the house and cheer us up. I am
very worried for all the solanacea I transplanted, and the beans and sweet corn
I sowed. I had looked ahead and didn’t see this coming. I’m sure they got a
shock, but will they recover? Time will tell.
In between the raindrops we went out to the garden to do
some picking. We got a “first harvest” of the green-stemmed bok choy “Brisk
Green.” This is a favorite of mine.
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| Brisk Green bok choy |
We also got a first harvest of Cherry Belle radishes.
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| Cherry Belle |
For continuing harvests, we took several more white-stemmed bok choy called “Asian Delight.”
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| Asian Delight |
And more French Breakfast-type radishes.
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| 'French Dressing' radishes |
The Kitchen Goddess made me a wonderful egg drop soup using some of the Asian greens, with her rich chicken stock. I was very happy!
It’s surprising to me that we still have some winter squash in
storage. We don’t have the traditional New England cellar, which gets quite
cool in winter. Ours stays a pretty consistent 55 degrees F. (~12.8 C.). The
screened storage boxes I built a few years ago have done their job protecting
the squash from mouse predation. Here are some I brought up for use this week:
a “Sugaretti” hybrid spaghetti squash and three butternuts.
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| Winter Squash from storage |
That’s all for this week. The weather looks like it will improve substantially in the coming days, and I hope things get back to growing. Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for keeping Harvest Monday going.
Oh me, the egg drop soup sounds yummy! We got the cold snap here a couple of days before you did. It is warming up here now. Like you I've been planting beans and solanaceous veggies and hopefully they will just shiver a bit and recover. It looks like your winter squashes are aging quite nicely in storage.
ReplyDeleteIt truly was yummy, Dave, with mushrooms, ginger, and rice noodles. Glad that it is warming there and hope it comes our way!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Jim Crockett would advise in these days of unpredictable weather and climate change. Gosh I miss him. His book got me started as a New England gardener. I'm sure he'd be all organic these days.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching his show! He never seemed to have the problems I deal with.
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