The Beginning of Gardening Season in Lower Alabama

I looked out the dining room window on Sunday afternoon and realized the woebegone cherry tree outside was putting on new leaves.

We are now within the hair-trigger time period for establishing a garden here in Lower Alabama.

After seeing the cherry tree, I had to squint up the last frost date, as I knew it must be close.

Out in the supplies forest, the mulberries and pomegranates are waking up without their winter sleep.

This is a difficult time and fraught with danger, as we are often subject to late freezes that can undo the weightier gardening plans.

If you don’t plant early, the weather gets too hot for your cool-season vegetables, such as cabbages, kohlrabi, radishes, English peas, potatoes, beets, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, onions and turnips.

Look at this weather!

You’d think we’d be fine planting corn, pumpkins, untried beans, okra, melons, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and all the good crops of summer.

And we might be.

But we moreover might not be. One night unelevated 32 – which is likely surpassing the end of March – and POW! That work is done.

Yet the weather is moreover getting too hot and humid for many summer crops by June/July. And the bugs! They come in swarms to destroy your nonflexible work as the days warm and lengthen.

This time right now is key for getting in the cool-season plants and preparing to start the warmer plants. In the greenhouse right now we have zinnias and marigolds, tomatoes and eggplants, peppers, cabbage, Jamaican sorrel, tobacco and more, safely getting a throne start on the spring garden.

We could have started increasingly cool-season vegetables increasingly than a month ago. But we weren’t ready. Now the time is short!

Outside of the vegetable garden, it’s time to start grafting pears. There are wild Bradford pears all over the place which we’re going to re-graft with good fruiting pears.

It’s moreover time to propagate bamboo. One of the clumping types on the property is putting up new shoots. If we reservation it now we can divide some off to plant elsewhere.

We moreover have bare-root fruit trees that need planting.

And some unseeded trees in pots that should go in the ground surpassing they awaken.

And world trees that are waking up, which need to be mulched and have the grass cleaned up from virtually them.

And the Grocery Row Gardens need the weeds of winter pulled surpassing the shoots of ginger, Jerusalem artichokes, cassava, potatoes and other roots start appearing.

Everything happens all at once! It’s an heady time.

A good start now sets the pace for the rest of the year.

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