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| Spring “surfed” chard in my home garden |
Catching the first real heat of spring in the garden is like surfing a great wave. OK, to tell the truth, I really don’t surf, but apparently neither did Bryan Wilson of the Beach Boys, and he/they made a career singing about it, so permit me some creative license here. I imagine that when you’re surfing, you’re out there waiting for the big one, trying to get into the Zen of the wave, and then all of a sudden you make your move and – BINGO – you’re “sitting on top of the world”. Spring gardening is like that, too. All your overwintering stuff has been sitting there pretty much suspended after some late fall harvests and puttering along through the dead of winter. Then weather warms, tree buds swell, and, just before the kale or chard crop goes bolt crazy and heads for seed, it puts on a flush of leafy growth. If your Zen mind is right on, you can ride this wave into heaping plates of tasty, sweet spring greens, and that’s what I’m doing this week. Yum, yum! Plus whatever you’ve put into the ground recently is visibly growing. I just came back from a spring-break-California road trip (passing by San Onofre…another Beach Boys’ reference), and I can see the bump my peas and garlic got from a few days of sunny, mild weather. No matter how able you are at surfing the edge of winter/spring with your overwintered greens, the new planting spring swell is one almost anyone can catch because it’s a long, strong surge. All you have to do is put something into the ground now, and you’re riding!
So what are you waiting for? Surf’s up!
I’m not promising that if you get out there and garden that you’ll be as revered as surfers are, but you will be participating in the age-old rites of spring planting, and as the Beach Boys said, that’s “not a fad ’cause it’s been going on so long.”
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| Like, hang ten on this kale, dude! |