Wednesday 29 March 2023

Signs of spring, and getting the garden ready

The daffodils and hyacinth are starting to nose out of the ground. The onions I didn't harvest last year are about four inches tall already. There's still snow in shady patches, but the temperatures are rising. Birdsong has returned to the early morning, and I think the song of robins is the happiest sound of spring.

I think I've been watching too many Youtube videos on gardening, because this year I seem to have this weird fear that I don't know what I'm doing. I've been growing vegetables for 35 years or more, and I've always done pretty well. My harvest varies from year to year, but there's always plenty. So why am I suddenly second-guessing and over-thinking? Is it because, with rising food prices and coming shortages, I am putting too much importance on the results and forgetting to enjoy the process? 

Maybe. All I know is I'm plagued by doubts and questions. Is it too early to remove the mulch from the garlic? Am I amending the soil properly? Do I start the seedlings now and trust that the last frost date will be the same this year? Lately it has been unpredictable. One year I can plant in the third week of May, and the next year it's too cold until June. And at the other end of the season, some years we get frosts in September and sometimes not until December or even January. So how can a person possibly predict and plan?

I'm paralyzed by over-information, I think. It's the same feeling I get when I over-plan my writing and spend all my energy outlining and plotting and never get to the actual writing. I've watched the advice of too many experts. I need to turn off Youtube and use common sense and experience and just do stuff, you know?

In the end the seeds can be trusted to know what to do.

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