It's Go Time

March may go in like a lion, but our lion has a split personality. It was in the 50s today, though there was a dusting of snow on the ground early this morning. After work Funnydad brought the girls to a playground in the bike chariot, taking immediate advantage of the extended daylight and our quixotic weather. Last week we built a snowman. Two weekends ago it was warm enough to wear short sleeves while doing yard work. The weather here, in the shoulder seasons at least, is wacky. My friends in Minnesota are still dealing with snow and temperatures below freezing, and this is the time of year I'm gleeful to have left the upper Midwest behind. We always want the best of everything, so I'm sure summer will have me wishing for one of those 10,000 lakes and a cabin. But for now give me my quirky Colorado March weather.

At any rate, it's time to get started on my garden. Go Time. No time to putz around, there's a lot to do. Time to get excited, dirty, eager, and almost certainly horticulturally over-committed. We inherited a stunning perennial garden complements of our house's previous owner's green thumb. In our yard this year, it's all about learning. We're not planting anything new, and we're not making any other landscaping changes. Gotta learn what we have and how it grows. It's a lot to take care of, but I'm excited because it's the kind of garden I always hoped I'd have someday, the kind that always has something in bloom. A gardener's rule of thumb is that the first year plants "sleep," the second they "creep," and the third they "leap." This means the new owner of our Minneapolis house should be enjoying some leaping this spring since I began my garden there three years ago. So, in terms of cosmic garden balance, it's fitting that I enjoy someone else's leaping -- but this garden is beyond what I could have planned. Remember, four summers ago I was still living in New York City with nary a speck of dirt to till. I'm relatively new to all this. We have to learn how to care for what we've inherited, and these are desert plants, not the azaleas and dogwoods of my mother's yard. But I'm up to the challenge. It's March, I have lots of energy for my garden.

All the new garden action this year is happening in my community garden plot. Community gardening is a serious thing here with people all over town participating. Boulder has seven different community gardens with a total of 350 plots available for lease each year, and some of those plots are subdivided into halves and thirds. I scored a plot in the community garden just yards from our house, a stroke of luck kind of. (Really, I just got myself on the waiting list early.) There aren't enough plots for new gardeners to go around; there's a waiting list.

My plot, number 507 if you're interested, is smack in a sea of others just like it in a mammoth community garden very close to our house.


Plot 507 on the day in late February when it was assigned to me. It looks pretty much the same now, only with a layer of compost on top.

As you can see, it's a big, flat piece of dirt. It measures 16 x 33, which works out to more square feet than the apartment I was living in when I met my husband. I'm psyched. I'm also pretty sure that in some way I'll get in over my head because that is a lot of garden to keep up with on top of our yard (see above), a job, and twins. Last year my plot belonged to someone who let it get too weedy and got kicked out for neglect (the community garden has Rules). I'm told there were forests of weeds, which means there are likely weed roots and seeds in there just waiting to cause trouble. I'll have to be vigilant, but I'm not daunted. (Talk to me in July.)

On a recent warm weekend day I enlisted some familial muscle and we weeded best we could and spread nine wheelbarrows of compost over the whole thing. There's a lot to do in these early days -- I have to prepare a bed for sugar snap peas and shelling peas which go in about St. Paddy's Day. I want to work in some of this compost so it won't blow away if the winds kick up before I have it all rototilled in April. I need to plan out my beds and get them ready for planting. I need to dig my carrot and beet beds extra deep so these root crops have the best chance to flourish. I need to put up a deer fence before tender seedlings show their precious leaves.

I've started seeds indoors, this year rigging up a florescent grow light in the unused space below our stairs in the basement. The last frost date here is in early May, and after that it's statistically safe to put out new plants. Tomatoes and peppers don't go out until Memorial Day weekend.


My seed starting contraption. I am mighty proud of myself for realizing that the space under the stairs was perfect for this project. We don't store stuff there, the girls don't play in it, and it's concrete, so dirt and water won't ruin anything.
I'll remove the lids when all seeds have sprouted. The light is on a timer and there is a special heating mat under the boxes. As the seedlings grow I can move the light up, and when they need it, I'll replant them into larger starter pots. I've never used artificial light to start seeds before, but it's supposed to yield sturdier seedlings because they get consistent full-spectrum light for the proper number of hours a day.


Future red leaf lettuce. I plan to keep lettuce growing as a continual crop until the heat kicks up. Then I'll start it again as a cool weather crop until the frost takes it.

A community garden is supposed to build a sense of community. Already I think it's working. I've met a couple of my garden neighbors, and a colorful, talkative guy named Curly who has had a plot in this garden for 32 years (the garden's been going for 34). I had a nice chat with the lady supervising the compost sale. It's interesting, a whole new subculture. For instance, I'm realizing there are many different opinions about how, and even whether, to discourage deer from parading through the garden (it seems deer are the primary garden enemy here, whereas I'm used to battling rabbits and squirrels). There's a debate about whether east-west rows or north-south rows are better. Some say because we're on the 40th parallel it doesn't matter. Me, I'm going east-west, but only because it feels more manageable in terms of row length; I don't have an opinion in this debate yet.

I realize that I garden the way I tackle other projects in my life. I'm all about research and a plan until it's Go Time. Since the new year I've read about gardening in Colorado -- websites, magazines, and books. I've thought about what I wanted to grow and have pored over seed catalogs. I've plotted my beds on graph paper. Now that I'm out there with dirt under my finger nails, I'm more about instinct and tapping into other gardeners' experience than what I'd planned out. I have a seed-starting excel spreadsheet calibrated to Boulder's last frost date that I created during precious spare time in January. Really. But I've already gone against it by planting my watermelon seeds and cucumbers ahead of their specified date. I've staked out my garden beds with little flag corners using a tape measure, but I left my graph paper map of exactly what they were to look like at home. I enjoy the planning and research, but only to a point. In the field I'd rather embrace the experience.

You only get one shot each summer. You can't stop in July and say, wait, I've learned so much from this season so far, I want to start again and do it all better. The best a gardener can do is keep a journal and learn from her mistakes and successes. That's why Go Time is so exciting. It's the beginning, and the possibility of reward -- for the eyes, the stomach, and the spirit -- is so great.