Big Myrtle's Annual "Should we or shouldn't we" Post...

The fastest way to irritate a grumpy person who wants to complain about the weather is to tell them that their presumptions about the weather are wrong.

While the last two weeks have seen some record low temperatures bringing bitter weather to places where it is not uncommon to see people in bermuda shorts in the middle of January and February, the urge to call this a “cold winter” is entirely misleading.  On average, we have actually been well above normal temperatures for quite some time now.  A couple of weeks of colder-than-usual temperatures doesn’t change that fact.

What has happened recently is that the patterns have altered slightly.  There is still more heat in the atmosphere, overall, than has been true in the past; however, it has been distributed in a slightly different way, thanks to ridges of high pressure sitting over the Pacific Northwest, and off the coast of Greenland.  Any low pressure at all in the middle of that mix – such as we have had twice in the last two weeks – will result in the jet stream looping way down the plains into Mexico. 

Usually, the arctic stuff is swept left-to-right by the jet stream sitting high up in the contiguous 48 states, making North-and-South-Dakotacicles, but leaving Texans in our undershirts; instead, the arctic air mass pushed from up to down, leaving Texans huddled in our bedrooms, afraid to put our feet on the cold, cold floor.

We are about to return to a more typical pattern, though, which will see higher than usual temperatures for most of the country, for most of the Spring.  So, for those who wish to slap us for saying, “It hasn’t really been that cold,” you can soon relax.  Before too long, it really will be “that hot”.

This, of course, leads to our annual February conundrum.  How soon do we start putting Spring plants in the ground?

Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance has begun deliveries of herbal bouquets ($10 per container of herbs, write to her for details about subscriptions for weekly deliveries), and is a little concerned because, at present, her bouquets consist almost entirely of rosemary and oregano.

Nothing else is growing, except the curry plant, and that is not a culinary herb, it is an aromatic, misnamed for a style of cooking.  It is extremely good at repelling cats, but it is not particularly good as the basis for an aesthetically pleasing and useful kitchen herb bouquet.

So… we need more herbs, and soon.  Warm weather is just about here…. Do we risk it?

The answer, like so many of our answers over time, is both yes and no.

Yes, it is time to plant some things.  We are moving to a year long rotation of planting sunflowers on alternate weekends, for example, and next weekend is week one, since we are about six weeks out from the date of last frost.  Our odds for this week’s sunflower planting of making it through without any more subfreezing temperatures will be maybe 50%, and if there is a frost, then the percentage of plants surviving subfreezing temperatures would be maybe 25%.  So, this will be a boom-or-bust endeavor.  Fortunately, the seeds are cheap (and getting cheaper by the year, as we save each successive harvest), and the reward is fairly high.

Sunflowers serve multiple purposes in our plots.  They function first and foremost as an attractive flower, brightening the utilitarian greens and browns that dominate the landscape when you grow as many perennials and herbs as we do.  We plant a wide variety of sunflowers, too, ranging from pale yellows with multiple heads, looking a lot like Jerusalem Artichoke, to bright oranges and starbursts on medium sized stalks with medium sized heads, to huge maroons and crimsons, towering overhead and giving our garden a third dimension.

Sunflowers make a delightful centerpiece to an herbal bouquet, providing color on a small scale, and bringing warmth and cheer to any room, and accentuating the vibrancy of the more useful additions, like the basil, mint, lavender, rosemary, etc., which form the aesthetic backdrop for the dramatic flower.

They are useful for our other plants still in the ground, as well.  Sunflowers are a perfect trap crop, distracting the birds and insects from their more delicate neighbors.  We will still lose some berries and tomatoes and herbs to sparrows and mockingbirds, of course, but not nearly as many as we would lose if we did not have the screen of sunflowers in front of the blackberries and nightshades.

Sunflowers also aide in maintaining proper soil tilth, breaking up hard clays, and providing good stubbly mulch when dead, balancing hard-to-erode lignins with all the easily assimilated organic matter we get from our oak leaves.  The chickens also love to eat the leaves and attack the seed heads, so we get them in our compost either in situ, or else later, after having been processed as part of the chickens’ deep bedding.

Sunflowers also assist in water balance, as they draw water up, frequently being able to grow when the natural source of moisture is many, many feet below the surface.  This means we can afford to soak our other plants in neighboring beds without running the risk of overwatering, since excess moisture will be mopped up by the sunflowers.  Other Texas gardeners may be struggling for water, but with rainwater collection and a solar-powered pump dripping pond water on our herbs all day long (beneath the mulch, naturally!), we will be striving for moisture balance, rather than praying for any moisture at all, like we used to do.

However, because there is still a risk of that one final cold snap, we would be foolish to plant all of our sunflowers all at once.  We will roll them out, a few seeds at a time, over the course of the next seven to nine months, depending on weather and available space.  This gives us the advantage of being able to maintain something flowering in the garden virtually year round, with good balance, since we can see where we might be growing a bit thin, and where we might be a little overplanted.  It also means Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance will, within six weeks from now, never be short on flowers or herbs ever again.

There are other items we will be planting soon, too, some indoors, some out.  We will be starting our seed tomatoes and tomatillos indoors, not risking putting those precious commodities in until mid-March at the earliest.  We learned that lesson the hard way.  Same thing for our peppers – serranos, jalapeños, and bhut jolokia “ghost chili” (see “Man vs. Food” for information about that last one…)

We will be planting velvet beans and caigua directly in the garden, but again, not until the Ides of March.

Amaranth will not go in until late March or even the first week of April, depending on how long it takes the soil to warm up.  We do not want to work these seeds until the soil has reached an agreeable 65° fahrenheit.  We have several varieties, including some you will likely see in an herbal bouquet if you choose to order from Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance.  “Love-Lies-Bleeding” and “Elephant Head” are actually frequently listed as flowers rather than as food crops, although we intend to make use of them as both.

We will be planting our new fruit trees as soon as we are able; Crandall black currant is the one variety of currant which has been bred to tolerate our summers, and that can go in as soon as we receive the root stock from the orchard.  We intend to put in more grapes, more blackberries, some Dormand raspberries (again, the only variety available for Texas heat), some Rio Grande peaches, which have a fairly low chilling requirement (only 400 hours of temperatures below 45° F), and which produce later in the season – an important consideration, since we are aiming for year-round fruit production.

If we can find some inexpensive arbequina olives, we will put in a few more olive trees this year.  Likewise, if we can find the Bacon and Fuerza varieties of avocado, we will try to plant a couple of those – Haas avocado trees would also be welcome, but those are much easier to find.  These are low priority items, though; when your list is as long as ours is, you just work through it each year until you have to quit and wait for next year.  Our perennial produce is just that way, and will be until we run out of space.

And then, there’s the herbs.  Herbs, herbs, herbs.  Catnip, borage, mint, purple coneflower, anise, thyme, probably some more rosemary and lavendar, chamomile, and gude ainly kens wha’ else will find its way into our garden, starting this weekend, when we take a gander at what is in the herb bin at Farm Patch.  It’s time to plant some more herbs, and we are nowhere near satisfied – we’re just getting started.

The old saying is true, if you don’t like Texas’ weather, just wait five minutes, and it’ll change.  The change has come, and it’s time to get your fingers back in the dirt.

Happy farming!