Spring itch

Saint Valentine’s Day is the first of those holy/planting days, the next two being Saint Patrick’s Day and Good Friday. Saint Patty’s Day and Good Friday are both early potato planting days and Saint Valentine’s Day is the beginning of planting those really early garden seeds such as lettuce, spinach, peas, and maybe radishes, in other words the salad garden. So as I began to think of gardening again (did you think I would be thinking of LUV on V-Day?),I drove my little Nissan pickup into town to the leaf dump. I wanted to make sure I got some of the leaf compost before some farmer hauled it off for his fields. In the fall the town picks up and shreds the leaves and by spring they are starting to look like peat moss. In my opinion a leaf dump is a good recycling project for any community, turning refuse into something valuable with a minimum of effort. Have you seen what they charge for peat in the garden stores? Hopefully the leaf humus will be an excellent soil amendment. I’ve gotten six pickup loads in piles around the garden. I refrained from putting it directly on the garden area because I wanted to give the cover crop of ryegrass a chance to put down deep roots and grow. My cover crop really looks anemic this year but then so do the local farmers’ rye cover crops. Worst I’ve seen in 30 years.

I knew my wife would also want a load of leaf mulch for her flower gardens, so I brought her one. When she saw her pile that evening she put on her smile and got all doe-eyed and told me she wanted MORE! I tried to beg off by saying I was broke and my truck was very low on fuel. That evening a ten and a five magically appeared on my dresser top. So I brought her another load but she still wants MORE. That woman sure does love her flowers!

It is obvious from the above comments that my wife and I are getting the spring gardening itch. Once I get all those shredded leaves turned into the soil along with the ryegrass maybe the garden will be off to a good start this year. At very least I got my exercise quota from pitch forking those pickup loads. Now I need to get those salad seeds planted (when it stops raining.)