(HOST) If you haven’t gotten the garden in yet, commentator Henry Homeyer says there’s still time.
(HOMEYER) For many gardeners, Memorial Day Weekend is the time to plant tomatoes, peppers and petunias. But if you did something else this holiday weekend, don’t worry: it’s not too late.
I never rush to get my frost-sensitive plants in the ground. Still, my tomatoes catch up quickly with those in my neighborhood planted even two weeks earlier. I live in a hollow, one of those places that often gets a frost when others are spared. Every spring I start about three hundred vegetables and flowers indoors, and I’m as protective as a mother bear. I’d rather wait an extra ten days to plant than risk losing them to Jack Frost.
I’m also keen on something we gardeners call “hardening off” our plants. That means carrying them in and out of the house for a week or so. Besides freezing to death, plants can easily get sunburned, or dehydrated by hot breezes. I start the hardening off process by giving my seedlings just a couple of hours of morning sun, and bringing them inside at night. Next I let them have some afternoon sun, making sure they’re well watered before they go out. Finally, they spend a couple of days in full sun and stay out all night. Then they’re ready to be planted in the garden. That may seem like a lot of unnecessary work, but plants that are not well hardened off may suffer shock – and will languish for days – if they survive at all.
Soil temperature is another factor that affects plant growth. Most annual plants do best when the soil is sixty degrees or more at planting time. This is one reason why I don’t rototill anymore.
When you rototill, you bring up cool soil from a foot beneath the surface. A few days ago I probed my soil with a thermometer. On a sunny day the soil was seventy-three degrees two inches below the surface. A foot down it was a chilly fifty-two. So I disrupt the soil as little as possible when I plant, and keep the warm soil on top.
Another reason to give up the rototiller is that churning up the soil can compact overly wet soil, creating hard clods. And those poor soil organisms that finally found where they wanted to live get moved around and dislocated.
Even though the soil in my vegetable garden is rich in organic matter, I add some compost and bagged organic fertilizer at planting time. Good compost is full of beneficial organisms – earthworms, bacteria, fungi and more. The bagged organic fertilizer provides extra nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium – the three elements most needed by plants. And unlike chemical fertilizers, organic fertilizers also contain a dozen or more other useful minerals. It’s sort of like the difference between a fast food cheeseburger and a seven-course gourmet meal. I think my plants deserve the best – so I try to make sure they get it.
Henry Homeyer is a gardening writer and columnist.