Frost to frost
Every spring a lot of work goes into planning and planting a garden.
We usually till the garden only once a year. Since it makes more sense to do this just before we plant, we do this in the spring. So when the snow melts, we are left with the remains of last year's garden.
Sometimes, wildlife has come in during the winter and eaten some of it. A few years back, we had deer that were quite comfortable in our yard and not even afraid of our dog. But that year there was more snow than usual and this made finding food even harder for them.
By spring, the pea vines were just a memory and the deer had left their droppings in exchange. It's the only time I don't mind the deer in the garden.
Once the garden was dry enough to till this year, Al went over it with the tiller set on its shallowest setting. He wanted to try to kill off the first flush of weeds.
Then, in an effort to retain as much moisture as we could, we only deep tilled as much as we could seed in a short time. It seemed to take longer to plant the garden this way, because we had to keep changing tasks. But finally it was done.
It doesn't seem to matter how many gardens someone has planted, there are always the doubtful thoughts of "will it germinate?"
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Children, when learning to garden, show this quite plainly when they dig up a seed to see if it is doing anything. Sometimes this actually slows things down.
And even though a seasoned gardener may have faith that everything will come up, they too sometimes have the urge to dig into a planted row and see if the seed is doing anything.
If germination does seem to be taking longer than required by that certain vegetable, this actually isn't a bad thing. It may show poor seed stock or poor weather that caused seed to rot. And if time allows, a second seeding can be done so the season isn't completely lost.
We like to take a walk out to the garden in the evening, and look for evidence of new shoots. Sometimes they can be difficult to see. If they have just emerged but have lifted some of the soil above them as they grew, they are almost invisible.
Once the seedlings have been spotted, there is relief. We will have a garden this year.