In many area gardens, beds of early beets, carrots, turnips and garlic bulbs will be harvested between now and early August, challenging us to choose short-season and frost-hardy varieties for continuous planting.
Rows of vigorous fall-planted garlic have anchored the garden with their lush foliage, superseded only by perennial rhubarb that thrived even when its leaves were snow-covered on May 12.
From the rousing, quirky sounds and silhouetted flight of woodcocks in the late winter dusk to the melodious phrases and amusing spectacle of speed-walking robins on sunny, just-raked garden beds, the activities of seasonal arrivals have tuned our response to the swelling spring.
When asked about the most important thing he’s learned from all his years in business, Rolling Rock Farm's Tony Carlotto said that it’s to be nice to people, adding, “When you’re happy and show up with a big smile, it spreads.”
After the ground freezes, gardeners look up to seed stalks and vines of flowering annuals and perennials to decide which to leave for wildlife and to disperse their seed in the landscape, and which to cut to collect seed for intentional sowing or to compost.
Onions and potatoes, tomatoes and basil, cucumbers and kale, snap beans and zucchini fill dinner plates and overflow salad plates as the growing season peaks.
Among the late summer bloomers in my landscape are a fragrant heirloom phlox, Japanese anemone, Oswego tea, Russian sage and New York ironweed, all perennials.
The rain, the sight of the Sun at the top of the sky, the quickened greening of the earth and the press of crops ready for harvest pull us into the rising tide of the growing season.
Touring the garden, perennial herbs and flowers, as well as fall-planted garlic that emerged from snowdrifts scarcely two weeks ago, have been growing quickly since the recent heat wave.