The Daily: 24 May 24

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It’s been the sort of month that pushes even climate deniers out of their comfy head-in-the-sand world. Every day there are pictures of homes and lives destroyed by extreme storms, from one end of the country to the other. In May, folks… The Northern Hemisphere is not yet heated to its summer temperatures and we’re already experiencing Dog Days weather. It was 91°F/32.8°C yesterday afternoon in Vermont. If I can even use the word “normal” in referencing weather anymore, then I might point out that temperatures over 90°F used to be rare in this part of the world and only seen well after Midsummer.

However, my weather journal says that we had 95°F on the last day of May 2023 — after a month of cold that included the latest hard freeze that New England has experienced in decades and snow in the middle of the month. It was also very dry last year. This year is also dry. After nearly a full year of wet, often excessively so, May 2024 has had less than 1.5″ of rain. According to all the weather almanacs and data compilers, my part of the world used to get over 3″ of precipitation in May. So we’re down by half, though we’re doing much better than the 3/4″ that we got last May, nearly all at the beginning of the month.

This year, we’ve not had snow, but it has been whiplash temperatures. I was wearing a winter jacket just last week. I haven’t dug out the summer clothes yet, nor put my summer tires on my car, because it hasn’t been summer enough to justify spending the time on those projects. However, there have been several very warm days scattered about. Most of these have been associated with dry wind, so not exactly ideal spring weather. More like August…

I know most of you garden enough to appreciate just how hard it is to get young plants growing in weather like this. Our food plants are largely tropical or subtropical, and they were bred in the benign days of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Seeds from these plants expect relatively constant, warm soil temperatures and a growing season marked by nearly daily precipitation — it isn’t summer so much as the rainy season in most of the places where our food plants are native. But seedlings of all plants require high moisture. Even the grasses need steady rain to transform a hard seed into a delicate leafy shoot, and no infant plant can shove its way through hard-baked dirt. So a dry May is devastating in the garden.

It’s all the worse in the high latitudes, far North or South, where the growing season only lasts a few months because there isn’t enough sunlight or warmth for much of the year. Vermont isn’t too far north, we have a growing season that reliably lasts a bit over four months, starting around the middle of May and lasting through the middle of September. These days, the first frost has been later and later in the year, so we can stretch the growing season for cool season crops like brassicas and peas into the fall. But it’s hard to give up May and hope that September will last. For one thing, most gardeners are done by September… because the weeds have adapted to the new normal just fine and we get to start the battle against encroachment as early as March. By autumn, we want to focus on putting the harvest in storage and putting the garden to bed. But maybe we can be trained otherwise.

However, the nightshades and the beans and the cucurbits… they all need May. They need a good long run of warmth and constant moisture. And they’re not fond of September in Vermont. The nights are too cold and the days are too dark with cloud that never seems to produce much more than a miserable, mold-breeding mist. I can usually get the winter squash to keep going through the month — provided the rodents don’t destroy the plants — but generally the warm season veg does not survive the cold damp of autumn. Yet those plants need 80-90 or even 100 days to produce fruit, and usually a week or so after fruiting to fully ripen it. When you only have 120 days between killing frosts, that’s not much margin. Giving up May means the chiles may not set fruit until it’s too cool at night to allow for ripened pods with lots of yummy capsaicin.

But I guess that’s the way things will be. I am trying to adapt, though I do feel rather done with climate change… I’m just too old for constant flux. As a young gardener I was all about adventure. — Let’s grow broccoli in Albuquerque! Without paying water-use fines! — There were many failures, but it was still oddly fun… These days I’m a mutterer when things that used to work no longer do. — What now! That damn thing was doing just fine yesterday! — And when all of May is just broken… well… there’s colorful language.

Still, there are success stories too. My jungle is far less jungly and — touch wood — I haven’t seen a tick yet this year. (Probably need to stop working out there pretty soon though…) I have planted herbs in the hügelkultur mound and, apart from rodent predation on a few odds and ends, those plants are doing well. The bank out front is finally filling in with plants that might support other life forms, and not the crab grass and cleavers that I’ve been battling since moving here. I lost an ash tree over the winter, but not much else broke or died, and nothing at all fell on the house or garage or power lines. Which is sort of a miracle. And I have volunteer garlic! More than I will ever need. I will be able to supply the neighborhood with garlic the way things are going out there. I have no idea what kind it is. It seems to be everywhere and not limited to the places where I’ve grown known varieties. But it smells nice and garlicky.

And so I keep plugging along at this project. Son#1 and I have added a couple raised beds and one large planter to hold eggplant in a sunny and protected spot by the house. I have planted peas, potatoes, carrots, many patches of summer greens in various beds, beets, turnips, radishes, cucumber, summer squash and melon. I also spread around calendula, summer savory, dill, cilantro, borage and chervil. So far, the peas are a few inches tall, the brassica roots are all sprouting, and there are herb seedlings everywhere. I have not seen one carrot, but the potatoes are starting push up. I am nibbling on cold frame arugula and romaine lettuce, planted many months ago and still just puttering along, mostly because it’s dry — but they are plants now, not just sprouts. My sweet potato slips have not shown up yet, which is a good thing because, except for yesterday, it hasn’t been warm enough for them. But I bought little fences for the beans and I think it will be warm enough to plant them next weekend along with sunflowers and winter squash, pumpkins and gourds. I even planted a few Brussels sprouts in the middle of the future sweet potato bed. I have not yet developed a New Englander’s love for these little cabbages-on-a-stick. I figure it’s time to embrace the local food culture (well… to some extent… I will never like fiddleheads… I’ve tried, really I have… there just isn’t enough butter in the world). So I will grow a few Brussels sprouts and see how that goes come Thanksgiving.

For those new to this garden of mine, I should point out that I am growing all this in the middle of my town, on a total property of less than 3/4 acre, much of which is, if not covered in structures, a feral mess (the structures tend in that direction too, come to think of it…). This is not my full time occupation nor am I particularly clever about it. I am also not young and don’t expect to eat much from the nut and fruit trees I’ve planted. But this garden is working. And if I can do it… in Vermont… in the time beyond normal… well, this garden is an object lesson in how we can muddle into abundance even in the midst of constant disaster.

I would like to have May back though… Could someone please put in a help desk ticket?

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Mayflowers…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024