The Risk of Frost is Past, Now Get to Work

I decided that the risk of frost for spring 2010 was past as of Friday. Victory Seeds places the average date as the 21st but I’m optimistic that we’re done before the average for this year. That means that it’s time to plant all those seeds that say “Plant after risk of frost has passed”!

That lead to a very busy and productive Saturday.

After an outing to the Como Zoo with the kids, I stopped by Linders to pick up a couple of Valiant grape plants. They only had one left, so I got it.

I wanted and have been planning on two grape plants in our yard, and I didn’t want to just hope that they’d get another Valiant in at some point. So I started looking for another plant to take home.

The reason I had chosen Valiant in the first place is because it’s 1) Cold Hardy — no taking this bad boy off the trellis and covering it with stray, 2) A good eating grape and 3) Good for jam. Those were still my priorities so I ended up with a Catawba which I had never heard of before. The plant looked healthy, and it’s rated for zone 4, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

With the grapes in the ground, it was time to tackle the transplants. I have been hardening off the first round of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and eggplants which had been sprouting in the basement. Here’s a picture of me watering them thoughtfully after everything else was planted.

The next big project was the pole beans. When I trimmed the overgrown lilacs this spring I saved all the big sticks. Some became fence posts, but the skinny ones were in a disgraceful pile at the back of the garden. Today they finally realized their purpose, and got together to make this

It looks like a jumble, and it is to some extent, but from the side you can tell that the intent was to have two intersecting triangle rows with a bar across the top. There is about a foot between each pole with is going to make for tight quarters picking beans from the middle plants. It’ll be worth it though, especially if we get a bumper crop.

With the bean trellis (can you even call that a trellis?) up I of course planted the beans. I planted one half Kentucky Blue and one half of something purple — I forget the exact type.

The pole beans took up more room than I had anticipated, and the bush beans got squeezed out of the garden. There just wasn’t anywhere else to plant them. So what do you do when you run out of garden? Dig up the yard of course! So I grabbed the shovel, cut some sod out, did some double digging while mixing in some homemade compost (last years raking is looking and smelling great about now!).

After the beans were in, I planted the summer squash, pumpkins, zucchini, acorn squash and spaghetti squash.

It was a lot of work today! More than I could possibly have handled on my own. Luckily our friends Erik and Liz were visiting this weekend from Missouri, and were happy to help. In this picture they are pretending not to be happy, à la American Gothic. Erik helped with manual labor while Liz helped with our kids and with identifying the flowers we have in our front yard. Thanks guys!

A lot of what we got done at the end of the day isn’t mentioned here. Mainly because it was getting too dark to take good pictures. Next up on the Fridley Farmer: Herb Garden, Flowers, and the garden of misfit seeds.