April In Rochester

This has been a pretty terrible april for growing stuff. It has been unseasonably cold, unseasonably cloudy, and unseasonably rainy. Even stuff that is supposed to be very quick growing like arugula and radishes are behind schedule. The radishes were sprouted when I returned from vacation on 4/1. They are supposed to be ready for harvest 28 days after sprouting. At least 23 days later, the radishes are still in the 2 leaf stage. And when I say two leaf, I mean the two leaves that came out of the seeds. They haven't grown any actual leaves yet. The radishes were supposed to be done growing before the corn gets planted in mid-may, but that is looking highly improbable at this point. I'm pretty worried that my peas haven't sprouted yet, either.

This past week we had a particularly nasty spring storm. I woke up at 1:30AM to the sound of thunder. The lightning was nearly constant and as the storm got close it started to rain. It kept coming down harder and harder until the street became a river. Then it started to hail. The whole thing only lasted 30 or so minutes or so, but it was a worse storm than I remember all of last summer. I feared the worst for my little sproutlings in the garden. I assumed that some would be washed away and some would be crushed. The next morning I took a look and everything looked perfectly fine. I was amazed and relieved. I checked the weather report and it looked like there was a second short storm later in the night. Between the two short bursts we got 1.4 inches, which was a new record for that date.

The weather for the next week looks quite a bit better. I took advantage of the first nice day in a long time to do some more planting. I transplanted some cauliflower and broccoli seedlings. I also planted another round of lettuce and some radishes in a few unused spots. Lastly, I planted the potatoes. There are two different kinds. One is a very early season small red kind(red norland). The other kind is a late season white (kennebec). I dug 8" deep trenches, put the potatoes in the bottom, and and covered them with a couple inches. After the tops get a foot high or so, I'll fill in the rest of the trenches. Supposedly that encourages more potatoes since they are generated off the sides of buried stem.