Wanted: A Dozen Warm Spring Days in May

It's the end of April and the soil
temperature is still just 50 degrees

Never have so many wanted or needed something so much.  And never has the weather been so uncooperative.

The Medfield Community Garden formally opened on April 1 and, by April 3 more than half of the 70 gardens had fences.  By April 10, many gardens showed stakes and strings inside; strong evidence seeds for ‘cool weather’ vegetables had been planted.

Then, the heavens opened up and the temperature plunged.  On April 23, it snowed.  Yesterday, it rained.  All day.  The radar map showed a blob of dark green over eastern New England that slowly rotated counter-clockwise, sucking in an unending supply of moisture from the Atlantic.  The high yesterday was 46 degrees, which was also the low, and which was also the ocean temperature.

Wood chips make paths
passable and keep down
weeds.

Two weeks ago, we ran out of wood chips to create paths around the garden.  Medfield’s Department of Public Works has more chips than it knows what to do with because of all the trees that have come down in the parade of nor’easters that buffeted the region with winds north of 60 miles per hour.  For days, my contact at the DPW apologized that the town couldn’t deliver those chips because they feared making ruts in the sod around the garden.  Then over the weekend (and amid a driving rain) a load of chips appeared. And, yes, with the load came heavy-equipment tire impressions that will be with us for weeks to come.

Unending rain and cool
temps well into May

It isn’t just the rain that is unseasonable.  After a winter with well-above-average temperatures, southern New England now finds itself on the wrong side of the jet stream.  Nighttime temperatures have routinely dropped close to – or even below – freezing.  The soil temperature was a chilly 50 degrees on Sunday, and the 15-day forecast shows just five days when the daytime highs get to 60 degrees or better, and 11 days when overnight temperatures will be in the upper 30s or lower 40s.  This does not bode well for home-grown lettuce or spinach.

I do not complain for myself.  Betty has been growing vegetables in New England since 1974 (when I first helped turn over the soil behind her apartment in Lenox).  We planted our first garden in Medfield in 1980.  We know some seasons are doomed to mediocrity (or outright failure) by flukes of nature, while other years yield bonanza supplies from any seed you drop on the ground.

This year, though, is different.  We have 77 families in our little acre.  Of those families, 16 are new and the number one reason they signed up was COVID-19.  The garden ensures food.  The garden provides the perfect reason to be outdoors when state and local health organizations are repeating a mantra of ‘shelter in place’.  The garden provides an opportunity to socialize at a safe distance.

New England will stay cool, but I
want gardens to grow lush with
vegetables

I want those new gardeners to have a great season.  I want them to have terrific yields of adventurous crops.  To that end, I’ve supplied fencing and stakes to gardeners who found there was none to be had at stores.  Betty is making certain everyone knows what is safe to plant and what is not (there is a special section of hell reserved for the decision-making folks at Home Depot who put out annuals and vegetables sets that are a full month or more ahead of the season).

In other words, while I care about the success of the garden in any year (to volunteer to manage one for a decade with any other motivation would be weird in the extreme), this quarantine spring of 2020 carries a special onus.  I feel I’m helping people get through this, and I’m certain Betty’s sentiments echo my own.