Spring planting

I always enjoy spring and the beginnings of summer even though spring is kind of fickle in a way. We can have a couple weeks of nice weather and then, whamo, we get a few days of cold, if not frost. But that's spring. Here in Missouri where we live, we can begin planting about mid-April. It's safest to wait till about May 1, but we can hurry the season and plant early. I planted early several years ago and lost about 75 tomato and pepper plants. To kind of quote a line from "Red October," tomato and pepper plants "don't take kindly" to frost. But with care, one can plant a variety of tomatoes called Stupice in mid-April and pick the first tomatoes in May if not the first week of June. Stupice is a tomato you need to plant a few every year or two and save the seed just to have some on hand. I planted some this year that my brother sent me back in 2012 and almost every seed germinated.

If you haven't planted your cabbage and broccoli and other frost-tolerant crops, now is the time. Mine have been ready to plant, but the garden wasn't ready, so they have had to endure some hot days in our greenhouse. It has regularly been getting in the 90s in the greenhouse even with the doors open. Marge and I put down several rows of plastic mulch so the cabbage, broccoli, kale, collards and chard are going in the garden. The only thing that might keep us from planting is, it's spring and the crappie are probably biting. I've seen a whole passel of dogwood trees blooming, which predicts the crappie are spawning or beginning to. I like to use minnows now and then, and a friend said he bought some from up in Jackson by the barbecue place.

A couple months ago I'd ordered some stuff from a garden supplier out in western Missouri, which included some onion sets I wanted delivered in mid-April. Got an email they were to be delivered this past week, so those need planting. We plant them through plastic mulch and water them with a dripper line. We have found this works fairly well. I should say it works better for us because it helps with weeds and doesn't require chemicals to shut down the weeds.

We buy onion plants. Onion sets look like miniature onions and are usually about half an inch to an inch in diameter. They usually come in yellow or white or red colors. Usually they are strong cooking onions. Different varieties of onion plants can be purchased with different intended purposes. Sweet varieties can be grown such as Texas 1015s, which can be eaten kind of like an apple. They are sure good on a hamburger. But the 1015s won't store at all. Maybe a month. We usually buy Candy because they are fairly sweet, but will store for several months. Onions need a constant supply of water, but they don't want to stand in water. They need damp soil. Onions also need to be fertilized with a balanced fertilizer but also with nitrogen. Add a little nitrogen to your water system or side dress them every couple weeks when they are bulbing up. Don't get carried away with the nitrogen. A little will help, but too much may kill them.

If you want to grow your onion plants from seed, I'd plant the onion seed about the end of summer for next spring. Talk about slow: They are slow. I planted some one year in November, I believe, and they were small that next spring. If you bought onion seed, then plant some along the edges of your indoor flowers this fall.

We did get our potatoes and corn planted. We kept back some smaller Yukon Gold and red potatoes from last summer so we planted them whole. Dad used to cut his up so there were at least a couple eyes on each piece. We didn't cut ours. I think we had about five to six gallons of potato sets to plant. We plant ours about 16 to 18 inches apart with the rows about 40 inches separating them. It normally takes about two weeks for potatoes to come up. Potatoes will keep fairly well in a cellar or in a cool room. The best temps to keep them at are above freezing and lower than, say, 45 degrees.

Growing up, Dad would put a plow set on a C International, and it was a one-bottom, but one could plow both directions. So Dad would plow a certain number of rows, and we kids would stick the taters in at supposedly the right distance apart and down so far. My sisters are older than me, and both of them talk about planting taters bare footed. I didn't. I was either in tennis shoes or cowboy boots.

We planted Peaches and Cream as well as Bodacious sweet corn. I used a seed planter, which does a fair job. Charlie, a friend of mine, gave it to me many years ago. If the seed varies in size, it tends to skip spots. Still better than planting it seed by seed. The wind was blowing like a hurricane the day we planted corn, so it would have been impossible to plant by hand except by bending over. I don't bend over real well any more. Honestly, I never did.

Some of the seed this spring have germinated real well, and some haven't germinated at all. I planted probably 36 zucchini seeds, and so far only one has come up. So I replanted about the same amount. Probably both batches will come up now. Seeds don't like to germinate if they are too wet or too dry. I'd err on being a little too dry. Damp is the key. Temperature is another key. Most like the temp to be around 75 to 80 degrees or so. I've tried the heat mats and had fair luck. I think they get the planting soil too hot. I think the seed starting mix makes a huge difference. I don't care for a mix of mostly peat soil. It is miserable getting wet or damp and it seems to be sticky. I honestly like a real good potting soil.

It's time to garden. In my opinion, try gardening even if it's just some tomatoes and maybe cucumbers.