Garden Update

We are one week from the last expected frost date here in Ithaca. Our hearty, cold-weather crops have now been growing for three weeks, and they seem to be doing pretty well. We'd been a bit concerned about our fava beans, parsley, and dill, but it seems those all take quite some time to germinate. The fava beans, in particular, seem to be doing well. Our spinach, arugula, and radishes are all getting their real leaves, which look significantly different from their seed leaves. We just planted a few new things: borage, lemon balm, flowers for our garden's perimeter, among others.

We spent a few hours weeding and thinning yesterday. I don't think I really realized how annoying weeding would be. Fortunately, I got a free pass on a lot of that work so that I could get our lawn mowed before the rain.

Tonight, we're supposed to have a freeze, so we have covered our plants. Judson made a special cover for our little baby melon. Judson actually did a ton of work today, patching areas where the chicken wire was torn (it unrolled that way), filling in holes, planting stuff, removing remaining grass patches, and burying chicken wire at our gate. He even put in a little threshold at the gate.

Next week is the huge gardening push, which means that we can't escape town for Memorial Day weekend and, more importantly, Cornell graduation. Oh well. At least we'll be busy.