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Farmers tell me that they don’t plant seed until around the end of the 1st week of May. This, they say, is when all danger of frost has passed and the ground is warm enough for seeds to germinate. I guess I’m jumping the gun, because I’m planting my seedlings today.

It’s just that everything is looking bright for those who live in West Easton. It’s going to be a great year. For most of us, anyway.

I’m not worried about the cold not germinating seeds. I started most of my plants indoors a few weeks ago from seed and some of them, like my tomato and cabbage plants are now large enough to transplant outdoors. I don’t see any frost in the 10-day extended forecast, so I’m hoping that these last freezing nights will be the last. If a late frost is predicted in a couple of weeks I have cover material for the garden.

The only item I will wait until May to plant is the corn. That will have to be planted from seed and putting them in the ground now would be a waste of time.

I’m also trying something different this year with the garden.

Mound planting.

It’ similar to a raised garden, but without fixed retaining walls that would use wood or brick to hold back the planting soil. I simply mounded all the tilled soil in a pattern that would allow me to walk through the garden without compressing the soil beneath my feet. The area where I walk has had the tilled soil removed, so I’m walking on already hardened earth. On each side of my pathways is the tilled and mounded soil.

Along the top of those mounds will be the vegetable plants.

To be frank, I’m not sure this will even work, as I hope it will. It may be that after some heavy summer rains those mounds will end up eroding away, but the recent 2″ of heavy rain we had a couple of days ago didn’t ruin the mounded soil, so I’m anticipating good results. If it means less weeding and less stooping over, I’ll be happy.

In the meantime, the 1-year asparagus crowns I planted last Spring are already emerging new stalks. You would think by looking at them that the asparagus was in its third year. They are thick and of a size that makes cutting them tempting, but I can only harvest stalks for 1 week this second year of growth. Next year (year 3), I’ll be able to harvest for 1 month. Last summer the asparagus put out a lot of thin stalks, but I let them all go to maturity. This is necessary to get well established plants that can be cut continuously after the third year.

I’ve been given orders by my neighbors to plant Mesclun lettuce again this year. I was going to cut back on the quantity this time, because I planted so much of it last year (you don’t realize just how much loose-leaf lettuce plants produce and just how big they get).  I was giving it away by the shopping bag-fulls.