Late spring means we wait to plant

When the Dr. Seuss character King Derwin of Didd got tired of the four things that came down from his sky, he had the royal magicians conjure him up some oobleck. This new, sticky green stuff proved a disaster, and the king was forced to admit, among other things, that it's a mistake to mess with Mother Nature.

Spring this year probably has local gardeners wishing for something different, too. Our unrelieved cold, wet weather has hardly encouraged much gardening. And for what little planting we may have managed at the outset of the season, the results likely have been underwhelming.

The peas I planted on St Patrick's Day are up, but they remain resolutely runty. Parsley planted the same day took more than a month to germinate. On the day designated for the reseeding of that crop, I discovered nearly invisible seedlings hunkering timidly in their bed. Only the spinach, planted about 10 days later, looks almost the right size for its age.

Is waiting for better weather the only sensible course for frustrated gardeners? Aren't there some tricks, short of messing with Mother Nature, that would allow us to carry on despite the deluge?

Unfortunately, most of us will wait. The few tricks I know -- like having some fast-warming, well-drained raised beds ready by early spring and covering the soil with clear plastic mulch to warm it and keep off excessive rainfall -- should have been played months ago. And even when such tricks are played, the results aren't always dramatic. Witness the performance of my early crops, all planted in raised beds, some protected with plastic mulch.

Then there's the matter of tilling or digging up the garden plot. The soil in many locations around the Sound is still too wet to work. When you rush matters and work the soil when it's wet, it compacts, forming clods that are difficult to work into a seedbed. It's better to wait.

Fortunately, it's not too late to seed or transplant most crops. Mid-May is a good time to set tomato transplants. Peppers can wait a week or 10 days longer. Beans, corn, cukes, zukes and winter squash should all be seeded mid-May or even later, once soil has warmed. And if our weather remains cold and wet through mid-May, you can start seed for these latter five crops indoors and transplant seedlings several weeks later.

Crops you might normally seed in April -- carrots, beets, chard and kale -- can go in the ground in early May without any negative consequences. You even could plant peas, spinach and lettuce, though I'd strongly recommend that you choose enation-resistant peas and bolt-resistant varieties of spinach and lettuce. Another option for the lettuce is transplants; check nurseries and farmers markets for availability.

You still can plant potatoes and set broccoli and other cabbage family transplants. Comfort yourself with the probability that had they gone into the ground earlier, cabbage family plants might have bolted, and the potatoes surely would have produced a quantity of hollow and strangely shaped tubers. Cold, wet soil abets those problems.

Curious about similarly shivery and sodden springs, I looked back through my old columns. We had such a year in 1993. The unseasonable weather that year lasted into early August. Most crops eventually ripened, and the year wasn't a complete loser. Still, we don't need a growing season like 1993. With any luck, we'll see a return to normal weather this month.