This breaks my heart

As I’m writing this blog post my sprinkler is running in the  main garden to reach the plants that I was unable to cover.

Frost.

The 5 letter word that gardeners shudder at.

I pride myself of knowing a lot of gardening stuff and teaching others gardening however nature can out smart me as you can see below. But I NEVER give up and when I cry because I lost some plants, my husband will come along and say let’s trim the bad parts and see what happens. And they RECOVER. So he won’t let me give up.  So I”m encouraging YOU to NOT GIVE UP.  Don’t let the “hard” make you say “it’s not worth it”. EVER.

Your doing so much more than “just gardening”. Your creating a legacy of food and health.  Your showing that FOOD is important, not only to yourself but your children, grand children, your neighbors, your friends, your family.  FOOD is important, GOOD food is important. 

We need to get back to our roots, we need to do better.  Our choices we make today affects our children and beyond.

It’s about creating a Legacy of Food & Health. We have a chance RIGHT NOW to change the trajectory of not only our lives, but all of those around us.

I’ll repeat again Do NOT Let the HARD stop you from gardening.  Do not let FROST deflate your enthusiasm for gardening. 

I get a text from Justin that the low is going to be 40. I check my phone no frost warning. I check my phone again less than a half hour later and there it is “FROST ADVISORY”.   Insert some explicit language here, who’s pressing the weather buttons lately?

It’s 3pm and windy not much I can do right now. It’ll have to wait until after dinner. In the mean time we go about finding tarps, row covers, containers, etc to place on the plants later.  Time to feed the animals, feed the kids and off to work we go. The kids were great helpers in cover what we could and the rest is up to time and nature.

I set my alarm for 5am so I can turn on the sprinkler before the sun hits the plants that I could not get covered up. I reluctantly get up, check the grass. Is it frost? It feels cold, wet and hard.  I turn on the sprinkler and check the plants under the tarps, still dry. Cold but not frosted.

I look around, it doesn’t seem like it frosted. Praise God! I think we didn’t get frost. Did we escape it? Yay!! I am however glad we covered the plants, 38 degrees F is certainly not ideal so a good blanket to keep the ground heat in will help. Now to uncover and get back to work perhaps with less swear words.

But the FROST is not what breaks my heart it’s the comments I saw on social media in regards to planting.   Many comments were saying “this is why I do not garden, it’s not worth it” or “Makes it difficult to justify a garden”. (these were from people I do not know)

Those comments break my heart. Why?  Because life is hard, why would gardening not be any different? But dang is it important.  Giving up on growing your own food should not be an option (unless other things come into play).

I’m a really good gardener but sometimes even nature out smarts me.  This is why I keep a garden journal to keep track of the weather among many other things.  Here in Northern Michigan can be a tricky game to play, there’s not a whole lot of time to grow all the things. But it’s entirely possible (case in point- my gardens).

Will every year be a gang buster? No, some things do great and others not so much. Then the next year something different will be amazing and what was amazing last year will fail.  It’s what happens, weather is different every year.  It keeps it fun and interesting to say the least.

We have about 113 days to plant all the things!  It’s a get er done 100 days of hard hard work.

This year’s weather is pretty wonky and I’m keeping my eyes on the differences that have been happening.  Let’s recap, 1st I can not remember the last time it actually frosted as it was early May I believe.  Generally it frosts end of May, our average date which was just updated recently from June 4th to May 31st.  June 10th we get a frost advisory.  Ok, thanks for that curve ball.  It’s also been rainy and cool which is unlike the past few years. It’s usually warm and dry until 4th of July (ish).

2024 Last frost date? Advisory on June 10th

• Started planting everything June 1st – Cover everything June 10th for frost advisory

2023 May 27th was the last frost then May 30th it was 88 degrees F

• Planted warm weather crops June 7th -9th – then the Canadian smoke happened all summer dimming the sun

2022 June 3rd frosted but end of May was 90 degrees F

• Planted some tomatoes and peppers- frosted – burnt plants – recovered slowly. Made note DO NOT PLANT UNTIL AFTER JUNE 4th

2021 May 28 frosted May was 90 June was cold

• Planted peppers & tomatoes in my hoop house -frosted- burnt plants- recovered

I pride myself of knowing a lot of gardening stuff and teaching others gardening however nature can out smart me as you can see above. But I NEVER give up and when I cry because I lost some plants, my husband will come along and say let’s trim the bad parts and see what happens. And they RECOVER. So he won’t let me give up.  So I”m encouraging YOU to NOT GIVE UP.  Don’t let the “hard” make you say “it’s not worth it”. EVER.

Your doing so much more than “just gardening”. Your creating a legacy of food and health.  Your showing that FOOD is important, not only to yourself but your children, grand children, your neighbors, your friends, your family.  FOOD is important, GOOD food is important.

We need to get back to our roots, we need to do better.  Our choices we make today affects our children and beyond.

It’s about creating a Legacy of Food & Health. We have a chance RIGHT NOW to change the trajectory of not only our lives, but all of those around us.

I’ll repeat again Do NOT Let the HARD stop you from gardening.  Do not let FROST deflate your enthusiasm for gardening.

Ok my friends keep on gardening, keep on trying, keep on keepin’ on!

Thank you for listening.

Your extreme food loving gardening growing friend

Laura