Plant potatoes - the old adage is to plant potatoes when the dandelion are blooming. In our gardens the soil is dry enough to do so, and now is a good time to do it. Our seed potatoes come from Chappelle’s farm and whatever they don’t grow themselves, they source from trusted sources in Maine.
Tiptoe around the garden beds so as not to disturb perennials. It is hard to weed and clean up the garden without doing some damage to young shoots of perennials coming out of dormancy. Using a yoga mat to kneel on, wooden boards to move around and walk on, or a small piece of plywood to stand on are all good strategies to disperse weight, protect plants and not compact the soil too much.
This is our annual reminder to spy spots for future spring bulbs, and mark them out on a photo so you remember where to plant them come fall. You can also use plant stakes, survey tape on bamboo sticks and other ways to indicate “this is the spot” come fall bulb planting time. The spring garden and the fall garden are stupefyingly different from one another and it is impossible to remember where you wished there was a clump of early blooming daffodils when the time comes to plant in October or November. We really like Brent and Becky’s bulbs for ordering online.
The ruby-throated hummingbirds are back! Now is a great time to put out hummingbird feeders until more nectar sources are available from the plant world. While feeding them sugar water might seem like an unnatural process, we have paved over so much of their habitat with storage unit and dollar stores that one could say the natural order of things is fairly mixed up with human intervention already. Thank you to all of our kind readers who have shown us photos of the hummingbirds at their feeders already.
Plant your onions if you have not already done so!