(I can hear my kids sighing already, Mom's been listening to Daft Punk and now she's paraphrasing their lyrics in her blog posts. What next?)
Gamble gardens are usually associated with spring time. You play fast and loose with the last frost date, sow a few early peas or go big with tomatoes. You hope to harvest days or weeks sooner with little veggies lined up across your rows instead of three identical fruits across the slots.
If you've been following my late-in-the-season laments you know I have been garden-less up to now, watching other gardens grow while my post-construction dirt yard awaited its transformation.
Things are happening this week; trees and shrubs, paths, a modest amount of lawn, beds, rocky niches, woo-hoo! And just as exciting, my kitchen garden beds made of sleek Cor-Ten weathering steel are partially in place giving me a place to play.
Most late season veggie offerings at the garden centers are rough, ragged; kale and chard tangled together, a few herbs and some sad zinnias. No matter I planted some, but they stand stiff and unnatural in one bed like awkward latecomers to the party.
Lots of gardeners don't think of planting seeds mid-season, but there are actually lots of vegetables you can sow up until end of June in Minnesota, sometimes getting a better yield bypassing certain insect pest's life cycles. Beyond that you wait until August and the possibilities narrow, but never mind that September 15 first average frost date.
I decided that between this weird weather year, the urban zone bump and a sheltered microclimate I could risk a few seeds and my high hopes.
I sorted through my seed packets and selected anything that could mature in 55 days or less. So this week with some good weather, a few rains and the micro-spray sprinklers I have little babies; spinach, beets, carrots, mesclun, two kinds of leaf lettuce, bunching onions and radishes. In addition, Harris Seeds recently sent a trial packet of Mascotte Beans, an AAS 2014 Vegetable Award Winner with a 50-day maturity date. I'm anxous to see how things go.
I've been out there quite a bit leaning over the raised beds encouraging the tiny green sprouts to get busy and grow. And surely that lilting classical music the stonemasons play while they build the drystack wall in the garden can't hurt.
