Gardeners' Holidays 2020: Planting Prep

The world has turned upside down.

Brian's workplace has closed its doors, sending all employees home to work (if they can). Our dance practices have been canceled. Concerts have been canceled. Our last role-playing game session took place online over Discord, with only disembodied voices in place of faces. The governor has "strongly recommended" a curfew of 8pm for all New Jersey residents. Pretty much the only time we leave the house is to go to the grocery store or to take a walk (maintaining a 6-foot distance, as best we can, from everyone else on the street). And who knows how much longer even that will be allowed.

The only thing that's remained normal in all of this is our garden. Because plants don't care about some virus that only affects humans; they're still going to sprout and bloom on their own schedule. So, oblivious to the ongoing pandemic, the seedlings we've started are poking their little heads up through the dirt; our rhubarb is growing and sending up blossom stalks; the asparagus bed has produced its first spear; the cherry bushes are blossoming earlier than they ever have before, and the plum trees don't look far behind; and the winter lettuce we left to overwinter in the garden is producing tiny, tender green leaves. And, of course, all the weeds are out in full force. And all of this requires attention from us if we want to have fresh veggies and fruit during this long, lonely, isolated summer.

So, this morning, Brian and I commemorated the start of spring with a trip to our favorite garden center. We were looking for three things in particular:

1. Another bottle of copper fungicide, since the one we have is almost empty, and we need to start spraying the plums regularly once the buds reach the "popcorn" stage.
2. Some seed potatoes for Brian's planned potato-growing experiment. (We ended up not buying the "Pinto" potatoes from Fedco because the minimum quantity we could buy was way more than we needed for this first trial.)
3. Some mulch for the new flowerbed we're planning for the front yard, as well as for our various trees, bushes, and other permanent plantings.

We figured we'd better get out and buy these things now, while we still could, since at any moment New Jersey could decide to follow New York's lead and shut down all "nonessential" businesses for the duration, which could be anywhere from a few weeks to over a year. The garden center was still open, and fairly busy, to the point that we had some difficulty maintaining the requisite 6-foot distance from other shoppers. We had no trouble finding the copper fungicide, and we selected four seed potatoes from a fingerling variety — one for each of the four five-gallon buckets (formerly serving as tree waterers) that Brian plans to use for his growing experiment.

With the mulch, however, we hit a snag. Brian's plan was to order two yards of mulch to be delivered to our house, but it turns out we're no longer in the Belle Mead Co-Op's delivery area. So instead, we had to fall back on Plan B: buying half a yard and loading it ourselves, as we've done in the past. Fortunately, Brian had planned for this contingency, so we already had several large containers in the car, along with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. We filled up two large garbage cans, plus about seven empty 40-pound birdseed bags. This, we hope, will be enough at least for the new flowerbed, plus some necessary patching of the layer of mulch on the honeyberries.

We emptied about half a bagful onto the honeyberries straightaway, then made room for the rest of the mulch in the shed by pulling out the patio furniture we'd stored for the winter and setting it back out on the patio. It's looking somewhat the worse for wear; the stain we applied to it in 2014, which was guaranteed to hold up for four years, is now well past that deadline and is looking decidedly patchy. Rather than reapply it, which was kind of a pain in the butt, we're thinking we might just try giving the whole set a coat of spray paint in some neutral color, which would be a much less fiddly job. Some of the chairs also need some tightening up, and the outdoor cushions we bought for them have developed some sort of greenish film. So at some point, we'll probably want to clean those so we can properly enjoy our patio come summertime.

While we were at it, we took care of several other springtime chores as well. Brian pulled out and set up our rain barrel and gave the plum trees their first dose of fungicide. He also cut down the dead stalks of last year's asparagus, and I pulled weeds out of their bed and around the honeyberries. I also went and nipped the heads off the newly formed blossoms on the rhubarb, which I'm sure is frustrating for the plants, but you have to do it if you want them to devote their energy to producing new, edible stalks.

All this, of course, was only the beginning of all the gardening we have to get through this spring. We still have 22 crops to get into the garden, a flowerbed to start (once the seedlings are big enough and the mature plants I ordered have arrived by mail), four potato buckets to plant, and lots more weeding and mulching to do. So I'll be keeping you updated throughout the spring on how those jobs go. If nothing else, it'll give you something to read about that isn't the coronavirus.