It’s up!
In my garden there are all sorts of little sprouting plants, most of which we planted.
This year we were able to get on to the garden sooner that usual. Al cleared the snow off sometime in mid-March which allowed the garden to warm up quicker.
I wasn’t too pleased with him at the time, but it seems to have worked to our benefit.
Combined with the warm early spring, we were planting almost four weeks earlier than we did last year. Although, we did get some rain and snow on top of what we had seeded, it didn’t seem to do much damage to
the unsprouted seeds.
And with the promised watering by Al, they also had enough moisture to germinate. The only thing I haven’t seen is the carrots, but they can take up to 21 days just to germinate and it hasn’t been that long yet.
With the garden planted earlier than expected, I was able to get some needed transplanting done. I have a beautiful stand of rhubarb that needs to be moved.
The catch is I still want to be able to harvest off of it this summer, so I plan to do it in two stages: transplant half and harvest off of the other half. Then transplant the remaining half next year.
One thought was, I could just cut the root in two and move that part of it. When I asked my Mom if it would damage the plant at all, she said, “They used to drag a cultivator through the rhubarb patch to break it up, so cutting it in half should be OK.”
I have been told that you can’t kill rhubarb, but in another garden years ago, I did just that. Maybe I was too careful with it.
The key to transplanting anything up here is to make sure the roots don’t dry out. With a semi-arid climate it only takes a few hours and all of the moisture is gone. So if the plants can’t be put back into soil within a reasonable time, putting them in a pail with some water will help them survive.
As I am just taking plants from one part of the yard and putting them into another, I just dig them from one spot, put them in the wheelbarrow and take them over to their new home. Then after planting them I water them heavily. This replenishes the moisture that may have been lost and also pulls the soil down around the roots so they don’t dry out underground.
One thing I have noticed with perennials in the Yukon, is that spring transplants tend to do better than fall ones. Now this could be because the fall transplants haven’t had time to acclimatize to their new location before winter sets in.
Whatever the reason, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the spring to do all that needs to be done. So while having extra time is a bonus. There is always some task waiting to be done on the farm.
