Yes Virginia, there is a garden...

So many domestic projects and assignments lately leaves little time for writing about other things.  Some of those projects have me out in the yard though, so things could be worse.

During the first week in April I started making trips to the garden to assess things.  To my surprise, I discovered that my artichokes from last year survived the winter.  (Look at the picture!)

I first planted artichokes three seasons ago.  Starting from seeds I ended up with two plants that year.  Neither of them flowered though.  I knew that it would take two seasons for the plants to mature, so I bedded them down well (I thought) and let them have the winter off.

They died.

So I started the process over last year.  For some reason I ended up with a lot more plants.  Seven of them.  Every seed I planted (from the same seed pouch as the year before) germinated.  The season ended, winter came and I bedded the plants down again.  I used newspaper and tree leaves, same as I did the year before.

They made it this time.  This means that I should have a really good crop of artichokes this year.  Nicole and I are both looking forward to them.

I planted corn this year, for the first time ever.  Normally I skip corn because it is so easy to buy and, to be honest, it would block out a lot of sun other plants in my garden could be using.  To keep me interested, I opted for an heirloom popcorn with a shorter habit.  The kids are really digging the fact that we are growing popcorn in our garden this year.  I noticed the first shoots (corn is a monocot!) poking up on Monday.

Beans are in the ground, a week late, but should be sprouting any time now.  Bush beans this year--I'm tired of managing the trellis.

Peas were planted at the end of April and are about a foot tall now.

I had to buy tomato starts for the first time in four or five years.  I started my seeds in peat pellets as I normally do.  Then I transformed them to styrofoam cups filled with a starter mix, again, as I normally do.  I couldn't find my usual starter mix, so I had to use an off brand.  That was a mistake.  The transplants struggled after that, and really struggled when I began to harden them off a few weeks later.  I've all but given up on them now.

We're doing several different kinds of winter squash this year.  Giant pumpkins too.  The aim this year is to keep it low maintenance, as we're taking a looooooong vacation in the middle of the summer.  Hopefully it will take care of itself, so long as the watering system holds out.

I place two seed orders every January. The first goes to Victory Seeds, my favorite supplier of heirloom varieties. I appreciate the mom-and-pop feel, and of course the great service that I get year after year. The second goes to ValueSeeds, which is the Big Lots of seed retailers. They take sealed leftovers from everybody else and sell them a year later, deeply discounted. It allows me to experiment with varieties I might not be willing to spend $1.50-$2.50 a packet on.

After scaling back for the last two seasons, due to childbirth and job-related priorities, I’ve decided to go all-out this year and tackle some varieties that may take more work. More flowers, definitely, but I also plan to take better care of the plants that I grow every year that typically get ignored when the July heat arrives.

Here are the seeds that I’ve ordered:

Swedish Brown Bush Bean (Victory). Supposedly a nice nutty bean from Scandinavia. I’ve seen the growing season listed as between 85-95 days, so it should do well in Utah. Part of the problem with beans for me is that they are usually harvested when it is VERY hot and I have little interest in going out into the garden.

Japanese Hulless Popcorn (Victory). I’ve never grown sweet corn because there is always a plentiful supply in our area. It isn’t worth taking up that much space for the few ears I'd get. But popcorn… this is different. This variety has a short habit, which means it won’t block out too much sun. I plan to have it share space with one of the squashes I will grow.

Garden Huckleberry (Victory). This has become one of my annual standards and a personal favorite. If the seeds weren’t so difficult to germinate, I would be comfortable saving them year after year and spending the money on something else. I’ll still have leftover syrup from 2008, so I plan to make jelly with the 2009 crop. By now I have become comfortable making jam, this will be my first attempt at a jelly.

Sweet Florence Fennel (Victory). I cast fennel seeds into the garden two years ago as part of a ValueSeed experiment. A few of them took and I discovered that fennel grows easily, even in a 50% shade area. I let the few that took go to seed to see if I could get volunteers the next year, but the recruits never arrived. I am still convinced it’s possible, but these seeds are to grow and then eat.

“Wando” Pea (Victory). This is a departure for me. I’ve grown “Alaska” for the last four years or so. Alaska is one of the earliest peas I’ve come across. That comes in handy in Springville where the gap between “cool and wet” and “you’d think it were July” sometimes doesn’t leave enough time to get peas in. I missed the window last year (mostly due to laziness). “Wando” does better in heat and has a good yield.

Hubbard Blue Squash (Victory). My favorite winter squash is Waltham Butternut. I didn’t grow it last year and ended up missing it quite a bit. For the sake of adventure, I’m going to try Hubbard this year. A neighbor grew it last year, and I didn’t hear any horror stories. The only thing I’m afraid of is it averages 110 days to picking (compare to 80 for the butternut).

Atlantic Giant Pumpkin. I grew an Atlantic two years ago and had a lot of fun with it. I allowed one fruit to set and it ended up getting huge (75 pounds or so). This is one of those avenues of gardening that really interest the children for some reason—something about a seed pod bigger than you is just plain fun.

Tomatoes are what first got me into heirloom gardening. This year, I’m trying two varieties that are new to me and one that is a favorite requested by my in-laws.

Katinka Cherry Tomato (Victory). Nicole and the children are big fans of cherry tomatoes. I have pictures of each of the children, at various stages of toddlerhood, covered with seeds and juice from their chins to their belly buttons. Sadie is at about the right age this year and Katinka will be her introduction to garden tomatoes.

Lucky Cross Tomato (Victory). I haven’t grown a potato leaf variety in years (last was Brandywine in 2002). Since its introduction a few years ago, I’ve heard quite a few good things about “Lucky Cross” and have looked forward to fitting it into the garden.

Azoychka Tomato (Victory). This is the one Nicole’s dad enjoys. He requested it last year, but I had already made my starts. It ripens early (60 days) and is tart when compared with other yellow tomatoes.

Tomato Supersweet 100, F1 hybrid. I grew these last year, and wasn’t too impressed even though they did better that the real supersweet 100s I tried the year before. Maybe my heart just isn’t into it—I grow the Sweet 100s (they are hybrids, you know!) for Nicole at her request and I never get the kind of trusses I see in the pictures.

To be honest, I don't know where I'll put all these tomatoes. The garden only had two plants last year. Nicole has hinted that she would be willing to put up with containers on the patio, but hasn't given the indication that she would help with the watering. :)

“Parthenon” Zucchini. We grow zucchini every year. Zukes are nice because they set fruit so early. Bonus is that our kids like them as long as we pile on parmesan cheese.

White Lisbon Scallion. These are supposed to be grown as green onions for salads and dips. I doubt they are true scallions, but I’ll let a few go to see what happens with them. In my experience, the Alliums are all great self-seeders, so I expect this is the only year I’ll need to buy seeds.

Chinese Garlic Chives. Another Allium. I’ve got chives already but these ones supposedly taste and look different.

Coriander. Also known as “Cilantro.” For years I’ve had a goal of growing everything I need for salsa in my garden. This gets me one step closer. Maybe I’ll bury a few garlic cloves from the kitchen and finally have it all.

And now for the flowers… My stance regarding flowers in vegetable gardens used to be “they aren’t edible, so why bother?” It has softened somewhat over the years as my approach to gardening has become more holistic. Part of this transformation included moving away from traditional row-based gardening to a permanent potager format four years ago. Two of the criteria I select for when it comes to garden flowers are 1) hardy perennials and 1) eager self-seeders. Prima donnas that require a lot of care and feeding have no place in my patches.

Hyssop. A perennial herb with pretty blue flowers.

Dayflower. I’m not sure how well this one will do. It is a hardy perennial in zones 7-10 (My slice of Utah is zone 5), down to 14F. Deep blue flowers if I can get them to grow.

Lavender (Munstead Dwarf). I have a few lavenders scattered in different places, but they’ve all come from starts I bought. Nicole and I both enjoy the smell of lavender; our garden could do with more of it.

Sunflower (Velvet Queen). Three seasons ago, I sowed a mixed bag of sunflower seeds that included some red and purple (almost black!) strains. These were so beautiful and I was happy to have them seed and come back the next year. However, last year I noticed more yellow and less red and purple. The little red and purple that I did see had a lot of yellow in them too. I suspect that genetics were at play—perhaps the allele for yellow dominates over the allele for color. My hope is that some fresh seeds will bring fresh colors and fun crosses next year.

Edelweiss. Alkaline and full sun. I’ve got plenty of that. I’m going to seed these in the front bed where they should do well.

Missing are yellow squash—I’m tired of them. They grow well and we love eating them, but there is no room this year. Also, I’ve been trying to locate seeds for cotton that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Probably not this year. It doesn’t make sense to pay $5 for seeds that take the better part of 5 months to see the results of. I’m also looking for a dwarf sunflower strain. They grow to about 24 inches. I’ve seen them in a few catalogs, but unless I can batch them up with other packets (and believe me: I spend enough on seeds as it is), the shipping and handling would cost more than the seeds themselves.

I plan a few more things, and want to describe some changes I'm planning, but this post is getting long enough. I’ll document them some other time—the winter is long enough!

Of Seeds and Quines

Tonight I caught the bloom of a chive in my garden. The miracle of a flower, accompanied by the plant that creates it, never fails to amaze me. I did not plant this chive--it planted itself and grew, mostly with no help from me. I planted chives 3 years ago and they self-seed every year.

One of the fun challenges in my field is to produce the shortest possible program whose output is itself, for any given language (this is known as a quine). If you're a programmer, and have never tried it, you're missing out. The challenge comes from deciding what to keep, or more precisely: what must be kept. The fun comes from the kind of thinking this problem induces--brute minimalism is what I call it. It really tickles the brain.

Seeds (or plants, or flowers), to me, represent the ultimate in this kind of minimalism, but in hyrdrocarbon domain. Every part of a seed is there because it must be. Nothing can be shed and still have something viable. Seeds are there at the beginning. Then when the growing and dying and and all the thrashing are over with, seeds are what remain.

In about two weeks the chive flower will have dried. The petals, having a achieved a paper-like quality, will contain the seeds of next years chives. At some point in the fall or maybe the winter, the wind or a careless gardener will cause the dried flower to shake, releasing the seeds into the soil where they will sit and wait for spring. And then the miracle will repeat itself.

Garden Update

If it weren't for the case of vacation I would probably hand water all season. I enjoy walking among the plants, examining them and even smelling the plants in my garden. The grim reality is that one week without water, typically in the heat of July or August, is enough to do any garden in.

Over the years I have taken different approaches to watering the garden. I started out with simple soakers everywhere. Soakers are nice, but unless they are stored every season, the sun breaks them down in about two years. Additionally, it is hard to leave them in place if you plan to work the soil in the off-season.

Then I tried a simple rotating sprinkler set at the far side of the garden that rotated 90 degrees (noon to 3 o'clock). This worked very well, but with two side effects. First, it watered the entire garden. This meant that I had to plan my garden excursions carefully, so that I could avoid the inevitable mud. Second, it got water on the leaves of the summer squash (yellow and zukes) and peppers. In my experience, these plants do poorly if their leaves are wet a lot. The squash especially are more likely to get moldy leaves.

This year I decided go all-out and install a micro-irrigation drip system. The benefits are that each plant (or row) gets its own dedicated drip line. No mud. Plants are also watered at the base. No leaf rot. I don't know what maintenance will be like. The lines are made out of vinyl and are intended to be buried or left out, so I assume that I won't have to pack the whole thing up at the end of the season. I have main lines that go down my potager paths. Each be gets its own spur, out of which come the individual lines.

One thing this does is tie me into a specific garden organization, since it will be inconvenient to add or remove new lines. That's fine. I've been moving in that direction for several years now as I try to establish sever perennial flowers and vegetables. Maybe this is the move I needed.

I gave it a test yesterday after I connected everything and was quite impressed. No leaks, and water was only where I wanted it. Hopefully weeding will be easier since the weeds will receive less water.

Garden 2008 Kickoff

I planted a few seeds last night: artichoke, huckleberry and two varieties of tomato.

The garden is scaled back this year, as I realize I only have time for so much. I've decided to start a few perennials (artichoke and huckleberry) with the hope that they will come back year after year. With a bit of TLC on my part, I think that can happen.

Cucurbits will be seeded in four weeks.

Quickies

Here is a Magnetic Fields show recorded in Toronto, 2004. Old, but if you're a MF fan, it's good stuff. I don't know how I've never come across it before. The sound quality is excellent, by the way.

I'm looking forward to the new record, due out in, umm... 2008.

I ought to post a few updates since this will probably be the only post this month or next.

1. Sadie (I call here "Sadie-my-lady") is doing well. She gets up usually once, sometimes twice a night. It could be worse.
2. Things are going well at the new job. I am uncomfortable with a few things though. If I don't go into details in the future, the big deal is this: At the last job I was one of the sharper pencils in the can. But here, at the new place, I am the dullest. In the long run, if I can hack it, this is probably a good thing for me. I'll come away from it a better person. But in the mean time, it's killing me just to keep up.
3. Garden--dropped off the radar when Sadie was born. I've managed to go out and pick a few tomatoes here and there though. And we've also got a honkin' big pumpkin waiting for Hallow'een.
4. My TV listing data runs out on Saturday unless I find time to upgrade my MythTV system. I've already shelled out for a Schedules Direct account, but haven't managed to put everything together yet.
5. School started and the kids are liking it. I can't wait for soccer season to finish though.

Squash Bugs

I just noticed a major squash bug infiltration taking place in my back yard. My yellow squash, zuchinni and pumpkins have all been infested by the little buggers.

Knowing they would do a thorough job, I dispatched my sons. They get a kick of our catching them, and of course, SQUISHING them (they have green guts!). I'll go through tomorrow and apply some pyrethrin dust on the larvae.

We destroyed quite a few eggs also.

In past years they have managed to kill entire plants. This year, my resolve was to "go chemical" on them. I've been spraying regularly, but they still have managed to gain considerable ground in my garden.

Garden Status: 18 June 2007

Usually, by this point in the summer I would have made three or four garden updates. Such has been this year. While I haven't made much time to keep track of things on this blog, I have made time for gardening. My garden is well.

I have kept things simple this year, forgoing some of the more exotic heirlooms in favor of a few standards. Out: artichokes, cow peas and collards. In: potatoes, snap peas and chard. Here is the full list:

Pole beans
Peas (lots!)
Potatoes (white and purple)
Squash (yellow summer, acorn, butternut)
Zuchinni
Watermelon (pink and yellow)
Cucumbers
Peppers (varieties of bell and some chili)
Tomatoes (several heirlooms and a Sweet 100 for Nicole)
Onions
Giant Pumpkin

Volunteer sunflowers have sprouted and a doing better than the ones I seeded last year. They are the wild, multi-color variety. The parsley and chard I planted last year decided to make a grand appearance this spring and are about to go to seed. Dill from last year self seeded and is probably the worse weed (if I can call it that) I must deal with.

In my quest for the perfect European-style kitchen garden, I have decided to introduce more non-vegetables (you know...flowers). I have St. Johns wort, foxglove, lavender, snapdragons and a few others I have picked up. I try to stick to the self-seeding types since I blow my seed budget on vegetable crops.

We've been picking peas for over a week now and expect to harvest for another week or two. The tomatoes and peppers have (barely) started setting fruit. I hope to pull get a few zuchinni by the end of the week.

I have gone chemical on the insects. In the past, they have ravaged my peppers. beans and curcurbits as soon as I set them out. This year, I zapped them before they could do too much damage.

This is shaping up to be a great garden year. I hope I can still manage some time out there once the new baby arrives.

Garden 2006: Starting Out

Everything is in the ground except beans, which I plan to put in today.

I had good success with the lights and growing shelf. Towards the end of April I moved the whole apparatus into the garage so the plants could get used to cooler nights. That made it easier to take the plants outdoors for hardening off.

I have finally figured out how to harden off my vegetables: I did not lose a single plant to wind or sun this this season. The trick was to do things gradually.

And I abandoned my cold frame. I would like to use it in the future, but it just needs to be more convenient.

Here is what I have planted, everything is from seed: tomato (pink accordian, indian stripe, moskvich and currant), artichoke, watermelon, yellow squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, huckleberry, bell pepper (green and red), chile pepper, cucumber, zuchinni, chick pea (black-eyed bean), and peas. Oh, and tobacco.

I've probably left off a few things.

The only plant that isn't doing to well is the artichoke. This is the first year I have ever tried them, so I have a thing or two to learn.

I'll post a photo when I find my camera.

Garden 2006: The Fun has Started

Our weather has been in the 50s this week. It got the best of me yesterday--I had to do something.

I have been lazy in the past when it comes to onions. I have never got them in before May. But this year is different--I did it yesterday.

I took a few minutes in the morning to do a garden layout. The potager books I have been reading have really inspired me. My 18'x34' plot will be transformed into about 8 beds. The onions will split the middle down the 34' length.

Onions weren't the only thing. I completed (more or less) the growing shelf I have been thinking about for the last year. One problem though--it is too tall. I will need to trim about a foot off the top so I can get it into the house.

After it has done its job this spring, I will paint it and move it out to the back patio to grow plants on. It will be a nice addition to the back yard.

Garden 2006

It is January now, and I'm starting to get ready for the garden. It is way too early, but I can never help myself.

These entries are just stubs, but I have created a garden calandar and seed order spreadsheet so I (and you too) can keep track of things. Unfortunately, the calendar HTML put out by Microsoft Office does not render in Firefox, so it is unsuitable. But the seed order entry appears to be fine.

I will try something new this year. During the offseason I have done a lot of garden reading. Old European potagers have especailly interested me by their practicality and beauty. So my goal this year is to turn my garden into a vegetable potager.

Potager Search
Potager Images

Sweet Potato

Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 10:01 - Garden

We're starting to get frosts, so I thought it would be a good idea to dig up my sweet potatoes. This is the first year I have ever grown them, and I got a late start using supermarket leftovers.

So I am amazed at the fact that I got two of them. Good enough to eat even.

When I first saw this picture (that is me!), I thought I was holding two small lobsters or crayfish.

Last Garden Update (Summary)

In short: we had a great year in the garden.

The tomatoes were everywhere. As is the case every fall--I don't care if I ever see another tomato again. Bring on the frost!!! My heirlooms didn't do as well as the hybrids, probably because they really took a hit while hardening off. But then again, everyone around here had slow tomatoes because of the wet, cold spring.

Summer squash was ok. It got sacked by squash bugs some time in August and I had eaten enough of it to stop caring. (Let me know if my end-of-season apathy is not apparent). It did fine up until the bugs though.

Winter squash was excellent. I pulled about 6-7 off of two plants. Not bad. I still don't know what killed two of the plants early in the season though.

I got two watermelon off one plant. One was big, the other wasn't.

I had pole beans coming out of my ears. I froze about 7 quarts.

Radishes were excellent, so were carrots.

Onions could have been better. The spot I put them in didn't get a lot of water, so they didn't get that big.

Brocolli... Hmm, brocolli. Brocolli is hard--I have only gotten the timing right once. If they come out too early, they freeze. If they come out too late, they bolt. They bolted this year.

It was a good year for strawberries, probalby because of the cool spring. I harvested them for at least a month.

Peas were excellent. LIke brocolli, the timing has to be just right.

Five pumpkins. Three are orange, the others green. I picked them all last night because I was expecting a frost.

Sweet potatoes. The jury is still out on these. I have checked some of them and the roots don't look very big. They have been fun to grow though. Next season I will make sure to order healthy slips instead of planting old stock from my pantry.

AND... (drum roll)... We finally started some asparagus this year. We won't be eating any of it until the third or fourth season because of the way it grows. I am starting them out in pots so I can take them with me if I ever have to move. :)

We had more variety this year than we have ever had before. It was fun growing all these different vegetables. This was also the first year I kept a gardening journal. As the years progress, I hope to avoid many of the timing blunders that always seem to happen. I am already excited for next season.

Garden Status: 18 Aug 2005

Beans are really coming in. We picked 1.5-2.0 lbs last night. And probably 6-7 pounds of cherry tomatoes. The summer squash (yellow) continue to do well--I wished I had planted more than one plant. The winter squash (butternut) are setting up well too.

My tomatoes are all doubling over because the fruit is heavy. One of these years I will make a decent support system for them.

We pulled up a few carrots last night too. They were good. I have noticed three pumpkins and two watermelons. The sweet potato vines are everywhere.

In other news, we had some catastrophic winds Monday night. The maple tree in our back yard was snapped in two. The bean house was more or less disassembled and cracked in two places. I will have to reconstruct it for next year (and enforced with rebar or something). Until then, it will have to hobble along for the rest of the season.

The boys really like it, and it does a good job with the beans. My only regret this year is that the variety of beans I chose (one of the only pole varieties I could find in stores) did not climb as high as I would have liked. I plan on using Kentucky Wonder next year.

Garden Status: 3 August 2005

I haven't done much updating about the garden. Basically, everthing has been growing. The harvest is just starting now.

Peas were great. We had a June that was nice and cool, so they grew well. None of them ever made it into the house though. The kids and Nicole pretty much consumed them on the spot.

I am pulling out about one yellow squash a day now. I hope the plant keeps it up because the whole family will eat that stuff all summer long.

Two Butternut squash plants in different parts of the garden have inexplicably died at different times. The plant would turn yellow, wilt, then die. The second plant died about two weeks after the first. I still have several healthy plants though.

My single Cherokee Purple tomato appears to have fusarium. I have still pulled two fruit off it (very tasty), and there will be some more. Black Krim finally started to set fruit. It will still be a few weeks before I can harvest any fruit.

Sweet 100 (cherry tomato) is havesting well right now. The other cherry toms are just starting to ramp up. In a week I think I will be giving the things away. The beefstakes are still green, but I will have tons of them when they start to ripen.

The onions look good. I won't harvest until fall though. The sweet potato vines are growing like crazy. I saw one baby watermelon this week. That surprised me, as the watermelon plant took SO LONG to start growing.

Carrots are plodding along. Broccoli too. I might not get much broccoli because they bolt when it gets hot. I should have started them about 30-45 days sooner.

The beans are started to produce. I was hoping the variety I planted would cover the bean house I built for the kids, but I don't think they will. Next year though... there's always next year.

Garden Status: 23 May 2005

I got the last things in the ground this weekend: onions. I know they are way late, but that didn't stop them last year, and I think I waited until June then.

The tomatoes appear healthy. The night-time lows this week are all in the 50s, so I expect them to really take off.

the peppers are ok. They take so long that I never really even give them a look until July, when maybe there are a few fruit.

The broccoli I started from seed are surprising me. They looked kind of wimpy after I transplanted them, but its been two weeks and they are all looking healthy.

The squash and melons have grown somewhat since I transplanted them. Some of them have me worried, because it looks the the growing tips have been gnawed off. I'll have to wait and see what happens there. The only sad part is that it appears that the watermelong might not make it.

To my delight, the peas planted two weeks ago have emerged. The week after I planted them, it was wet and cold. I thought they would have just rotted, but they are coming up very well. I thought the same thing of the beans I planted, but some of them have started to shoot up. Not as many as I like, but at least I have more seeds I can plant.

I cut up and buried an old sweet potato, just to see what happens with this. I know it might have been a bad idea, as I have no knowledge of what diseases the potato could be carrying, but curiosity got the best of me. I'll keep and eye on it.

Garden Status: 9 May 2005

Ok. The tomatoes didn't do that well. Most of them bit it because I failed to sufficiently harden them off. The good news is that I am left with one Cherokee Purple and one Black Krim, so at least I will get some dark tomatoe lovin' at the end of the summer.

The peppers I set out fared much better. That is, until the !@#$%^&* grasshoppers and slugs got to them. After a round of poision and a week of recovery, I think they will be ok.

The melons and the squash appear to be hardened off. I left them outside in the sun all day yesterday and look like they're going to survive. I stuck them in the cold frame this morning. If they are still alive when I get home from work, I will call the process done.

On satuday I planted beans and radishes. I hoped to get the peas in but it started to rain. Maybe I'll get that done tonight.

Garden status: 13 April

I started melon and squash seeds on Saturday. I also started broccoli, which have already sprouted. Tonight I plant to get my cold-frame reassembled and covered and start transferring tomatoes and peppers from peat pellets into pots.

Garden status: 8 April 2005

I started tomato and pepper seeds at the beginning of March (8 weeks before last frost). They are doing well. The tomtoes are about 6"-7" and not too leggy and the peppers are about 2". Next week I hope to transfer them from their peat pellets into pots and stick them in the cold frame. Getting the tomatoes outside should help with the legginess.

Last night I rented a sod cutter and broke ground on the new garden spot. I transferred the sod to cover the old area (leaving the compost pile exposed). It took me less than an hour to remove the sod from a 20'x80' section of ground--about the same time it took me to do 2'x10' by hand several weeks ago.

The ground in the new area is poor clay. It will take quite a bit of work to get it in shape for a garden. I plan to add quite a bit of composted manure, plus some humus if I can afford it.

Tonight I plan to plant melon and squash seeds in my pellet tray. We're about a month away from the last frost.