Friday, October 29, 2010

Could Mother Nature please knock it off?

The sudden warm temperatures earlier this week have sort of put a damper on my planting plans.  Or rather it just screwed me up entirely.  The raspberry bushes are in and even pushing out a few last pieces of fruit.  I decided not to plant any arugula and spinach, because I was feeling too lazy to have to go and cover them up every night when the temperatures were quite low in mid-October.  Plus you know there would've been a night that I forgot and had to go outside in pajamas at midnight to cover them up (who am I kidding, I would've made my husband do it, he's from Wisconsin, he likes the cold).  Then this week, we had crazy warm temperatures - if I had planted the darn leaf lettuces a few weeks ago we would've been halfway to harvest rarely ever having to cover them. ugh.

Then the garlic became an issue too.  Garlic is planted in the Northeast in the fall, just like tulips, daffodils and other bulbs.  The sudden warmth and warming of the soil this week is not good for planting garlic, because it starts putting out too much top/green growth.  Normally the last week in October is the perfect time for planting garlic in Connecticut.  This time my laziness paid off, as if I had put it in last weekend as I had intended, the garlic may have been shot.  Next week the garlic has to go in for sure.

So the lesson learned here is? Um, I'm not really sure... laziness is good some of the time?
I know what you're thinking that raspberry bush is a little scraggly.  Here is the cool thing about the newer varieties of raspberries, they get cut down every winter (more about winter pruning later, in the winter, when there is nothing else to write about) and put out fruit on all new growth in the summer, this way the plants don't get humungous and take over your whole garden. Anyone who has wild raspberries growing in their yards knows what I'm talking about.

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