June in the Garden
Transplanting beet blocks. Photo by Tenley Nelson.
By Tenley Nelson
When the alarm went off at 2:45 a.m. on May 26, I laid in bed for a few moments contemplating my tender feet. On the 25th, my phone charted that I walked almost four miles, just from working between the greenhouse and the garden or inside of the garden fence. I was pushing wheelbarrows of compost and carts of mulching straw, trays of vegetable starts and irrigation pieces, weeding and broadforking the beds.
I got up at that early hour hoping to see the blood red flower moon. It hung just over the Chugach Mountains to our south and as the earth’s shadow crept across its face, the moon slid over one peak and down another. It is easy to forget just how fast the moon travels across our sky when you don’t take the time to track it. It was, however, not blood red.
The strong spring winds had been whipping up the rivers and stirring up the silt off the sand bars. Some days you can see great billows of dust traveling up the Chitina. Other days it is clear here, but we can see roiling clouds to the west as the wind blows up the Copper. The mountains and moon were a filtered pinky orange through this thick dust during the lunar eclipse. We watched until the face nearly disappeared and then went back to bed as the northeast sky was beginning to lighten with predawn and the swallows started sleepily chittering.
Just as I forget how irritating a cloud of whining mosquitoes can be when trying to finish a task after dusk, I also forget what the silty air tastes like over the course of our long winters. All through the middle of May, my mouth was full of the dry, gritty sensation of silt laden air. My body too comes in from the garden coated in soil. My forearms turn russet brown while weeding beds and screening compost. I appreciated this dry, warmish spell for the ease of bed prep.
Before it started raining last week, most of my beds were ready for planting. With rain looming in the forecast, I pushed hard to get the carrot beds done as I cannot use the Earthway seeder in anything but perfectly dry soil. I hate hand seeding carrots. The Earthway over-seeds the rows, and I have to thin them later on. But I would rather do that than try to meticulously place 9,000 carrot seeds by hand. I prep the carrot beds by weeding, spreading compost then broadforking and finally raking smooth.
Broadforking the garden beds. Photo by Tenley Nelson.
A broadfork is a tool for aerating the soil without inverting it. You insert the tines into the soil and gently pull the handles towards you to loosen up the bed. Broadforking after the compost is spread means a little compost slips down into the bed instead of just mulching on top. I have permanent no-till beds as I don’t want to disturb the soil biome or break up the developed underground fungal networks.
The row placement is marked by placing some PEX tubing on the rake tines and running them down the beds which creates a guide to follow with the seeder. After everything is seeded, it gets watered thoroughly and then covered with a thin row cover. The row cover protects the tops of the bed from drying out too quickly in spring winds. It also diffuses rain drops so that soil does not wash away and expose seed in a heavy rain. It captures morning dew which also helps keep that top one inch from drying about pre-germination. I leave it on until the carrots start growing. They are not up yet and though every other year they eventually do come up, I cannot help but stress about them until they emerge.
The rain has been coming down for a few days now, and the air is scrubbed clean of the glacial dust that filled the skies for most of May. It was the perfect Memorial Day weekend for planting out transplants: cool and damp.
The garlic is up (though rather slow to grow this chilly spring), and the peas are emerging. Potatoes and onions (transplants, scallions, and sets) are in. Spinach is nearly ready for us to start picking baby leaves. Several successions of lettuces are planted with more to come. Chard and orach and beets are two to three inches tall.
Many folks still think starting a root crop as a transplant is not possible, but beets are an exception to that rule. I start them in trays of 100 in 1 1/2” soil blocks and plant them out when they are 2ish inches tall, three to four weeks later. I have had spotty germination with most of my varieties this yea,r so on my latest planting I soaked the seed in tepid water overnight to see if that would help. We’ll see. I should have added some kelp to the soaking water as that helps pepper germinate too. Next time.
Three rows of freshly planted beet starts. Photo by Tenley Nelson.
My brassicas are hardened off and ready to go in once I prep their beds. I am deliberately holding back on them this year hoping to delay most harvest until early September. I didn’t start them till the end of April and now they are robust four-week-old starts. As soon as they are in the ground, I will start work on my low tunnels and plant summer and winter squash, herbs, bush beans, and cold hardy tomatoes. I hope to have them planted by June 7th, weather permitting. My greenhouse is still stuffed with plants. Tomato and pepper pots are taking over the space that opens up as the garden starts are planted out. I am out of big pots and trying to find buckets to plant my cucumbers in. I forgot to save enough pots when I planted the tomatoes. It is so easy to plant too many tomatoes!
The ducklings are almost five weeks old and have been booted out of the house into a deluxe temporary accommodation of an old truck camper placed in the perennial garden. It is quite the garden focal piece. Ha! They seem happy enough with their cozy new digs. The meat chicks and poults are still inside our house but quickly outgrowing their stock tank. Hopefully it warms up soon so I can move them to the meat bird housing down by the garden. I am really looking forward to moving them out, and I know they will be happy with all the room to run around.
We just need it warm up a bit; 34 degrees for a nighttime low is still a bit chilly. My fingers are crossed for a warm June!
From my garden to yours, I wish you happy growing!
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