For parents teaching their children to garden, it is hard to compete with the apps on their tablets and phones, such as “Farmville” and “Grow A Garden,” that grow plants and communities seemingly overnight.
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.
Feb. 2 marked the return to 10 hours of daylight; as a result, Johnson’s seed house is currently brimming with all varieties of microgreens that are lush, healthy and being consumed at a rapid clip at the myriad local restaurants for which she is the supplier.
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.
At the end of a day flying under cerulean sky above a sheet of clouds and traversing airports, my eyes exchanged the densely wooded, rounded hills of the northeast for Albuquerque, New Mexico’s fantastical Sandia Mountains.
The garden has thrown off its snow blanket and frost-hardy vegetables are growing despite occasional nighttime temperatures in the 20’s when the top layer of earth freezes solid.
