by Kelli Bowen
Do you feel it??? That itch? That warm sun is melting the ice and causing hope.
It’s almost time for Spring Gardener Kelli to come out! I say I’m a spring gardener because I am all about planning, planting, and watering…right away. Then about the time the weeds take off, so does my gardening motivation, but not this year!
We have a bigger space for a bigger garden and we are already making plans. I have strawberry plants in containers and this is the year those babies are going in the ground to live their best strawberry patch lives. Miss A wants peas, cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes (even though she doesn’t eat the last two). Miss E wants carrots, potatoes, peas, and cucumbers. I want to get some establishments of strawberries, raspberries, garlic, and onions. Plus I have to have squash and gourds. Hubby just hopes I don’t go overboard. Spoiler alert: it is almost guaranteed.
Since we aren’t even out of January, I may have to cool my jets for a couple more months, but this unseasonably warm weather has my green thumb itching.
I’ve sent Hubby two different plans for raised beds so far that we (he) could do and if this isn’t the year for a pig fence arch to hold my vine vegetables, I don’t know what is.
As the snowbanks shrink and the soil temp rises, check on your farmer and gardener friends: we aren’t okay. The mixture of excitement and anxiety may push us over the edge.
In the meantime, I’ll keep stacking those garden catalogs and looking at them like I’m a 1960s ad man looking at a nudie-mag. Oh yeah baby, check out those melons…
What? Every good northern garden also needs to attempt watermelon, or muskmelon, at the very least.
Kelli, a North Dakota girl through and through, has made her home from the eastern prairies to the western badlands with her supportive Hubby, two daughters, and ever-growing menagerie accompanying her along the way.