Inch by inch, square by square

Today isn't an official Gardeners' Holiday, but it's one of the biggest days in our gardening calendar. It's the last frost date — the day after which there's deemed to be no significant danger of frost in our climate zone. And that means it's also the day the majority of our crops can go into the garden.

So Brian and I spent the better part of this morning transplanting the remaining seedlings that had been started indoors (four varieties of tomatoes, three varieties of peppers, and our Vanilla marigolds) and also starting new crops from seed (two kinds of basil, two kinds of cucumbers, two kinds of green beans, just one variety of butternut squash, and some dill). Plus one new square of lettuce. Plus the zucchinis, which were supposed to go in a week ago but got overlooked because they were way down at the bottom of the list. Our garden went from less than 13 percent planted to 99 percent planted, with only one square of summer lettuce left to go in next week.

Here's a shot of the garden as we left it, fully planted and freshly watered. Of course, you can't see the crops that are currently just seeds in the ground, but you can see patches of green where the new seedlings went in, and where our arugula, lettuce, scallions, and leeks are already growing. I was a little concerned about the fact that some of the tomato and pepper seedlings looked so weak and floppy, but Brian reminded me that we've had some in the past that were even punier than these and still went on to be healthy, productive plants. We'll just have to wait and see.

Speaking of productive plants, one crop that's already growing at an incredible rate is the new potato plants in their buckets at the corners of the garden. Since we started them, Brian has been topping up the buckets with compost to keep the stems buried, since you want as much stem underground as possible to encourage tuber growth. Pretty much every time he went out in the garden for anything, the plants had made their way to the top of the buckets and needed another helping of compost, and now, less than a month after we started them, they've reached just about to the top. So it won't be long before they outgrow the buckets, and then we'll need to figure out which direction to train the actual potato vines in — out through the garden fence so that we won't step on them, or into the garden area to protect them from hungry groundhogs. We've never done this before, so we have no idea which is better. Maybe we'll do two plants inside and two outside to see what works.

While working out in the garden, I noticed one other plant that looked like it was gearing up to produce something: our hardy kiwi vines. It's been six years since we planted these, and this year, for the first time, they've developed buds that suggest they're ready to flower. However, Brian urged me not to get too excited: after examining both plants, he'd determined that the flower buds were only on the female kiwi plant (Anna), not on the male (Meader). And since it takes two to do the pollination tango, that means we won't be getting any actual kiwis this year.

This isn't too surprising, since Burpee says, "Male plants need to be older than the females to perform their function" (i.e., girls grow up faster than boys do). But since the site also claims the vines normally take only one to three years to begin producing fruit, and we've had these for six years, it is a bit of a disappointment. But still, between our potato plants and the honeyberry bushes that are showing their first fruits, we won't lack for new flavors from the garden to enjoy.