Hurry Up and Wait

I am achieving a new milestone this week: my starts, for the first time, won’t be hardened off and ready to transplant by March 31.

This is a blow to my pride, but it likely won’t amount to a delay in spring harvests. Here’s why.

When I push the early season, I am asking the plants to tolerate super erratic and often cold spells under the row cover. The temperatures are sometimes surviving temperatures for days on end — not thriving conditions. While they can make it through extended periods in the low 40s under cover, it’s far from idea growing conditions of 60-75 (for brassicas). So I am working to compost my “end of March” pride this season, knowing there’s just not been a good window of time in which to harden these seedlings off yet. I am not even going to begin the hardening off process until after this mass of cold air pushes on by us later this week.

It was 12F when I woke up this morning, too cold even for seedlings under low tunnel if I want them to do anything other than survive. Starting Saturday, I see a string of good temps for hardening off. A low of 25F with covered seedlings is totally feasible and does not worry me; it’s just we didn’t have warm enough days recently to be able to properly harden the seedlings off.

I don’t expect to transplant my seedlings under the tunnel until April 8 or 9. Given last year’s raised bed construction, that might be the timeframe in which I transplanted as well, and it worked out fine. In fact, the extra week may prove inconsequential to how early we harvest relative to past years.

Heck, this snafu in pushing my season might prove to me that waiting an extra week — delaying my earliest sowing and subsequent transplanting of starts — is another viable path to achieving bok choy in April and Tiara cabbages and kohrlabi in May. I know this to be true for my radishes. While I have radish seedlings under row cover right now that have germinated, when I sow more next week they will be met with happier temperatures and thus mature faster.

What often happens is the first and second earliest plantings end up maturing around the same time. The earliest planting is really a deeply personal celebration of all that spring offers. It’s for me to get my hands back into the earth. To witness the awe and wonder that every single seed possesses, particularly the resilience of cold season foods.

All that being said, it is really mentally challenging to continue to be in this state of limbo where so many plants would benefit from starting the hardening off process yet my high temperature today is 32F (0C), so it’s just not feasible. I am taking this extra indoor time to be sure my next rounds of succession planting — more flowers, brassicas, beets, and lettuce — is planned out so that when I do mix up my next soil block mixture, I’ll simply follow my sowing legend.

Once again, the garden is speaking to us. It’s asking for our extended patience this spring as we endure unseasonably cool temperatures. I know I need more practice in patience, how about you?

Comment below: how is your early spring is going where you grow?