(no subject)

[greenstorm]

Hard to eat. Hard to sleep. When I lie down for a nap I wake up before my eyes fully close with a dream memory of breaking a gun in my hands.

Some springs are gentler than others, this one is again like a constant crashing of cymbals a couple feet away. There's not yet peace in it.

And yet-- the tomatoes are up, mostly. The ones from Annapolis seeds didn't germinate as reliably, which isn't great. A couple are getting their first true leaves: Martino's Roma, Exserted Orange, Maya & Sion's Airdrie Special, Karma Purple Multiflora, Rinon Rippled Delight. Heat and planting depth weren't totally even but it's a piece of information anyhow.

Last year I seeded flats of asparagus. It's a multi-year process to grow asparagus from seed, it starts producing in year 3 or 4. It overwintered in flats on my deck since I didn't want to plant it and have it eaten immediately by voles. The snow on my deck is receeding so I brought the flats indoors because I am impatient and want to know if they survived sooner rather than once it's warmer out.

I can almost see the ground under the snow. Tiny rivers are running underneath the snow, visible under trees and in odd patches and then hidden again. By April 1 I should be able to seed the grains.

I wrote about my past self today and used "they" instead of "she". It felt... better, like a kindness granted to that person, like freighting it less with things it could not possible carry. Within that previous sentence I realized I can use "it" for myself here in my own journal and no one can stop me. What a bittersweet but gorgeous feeling. Almost like a continuity of self.

Maybe I will get my bike out today and ready it for spring. There was freezing rain last night but the roads are mostly clear of snow now so afternoons should be safe. "Embodied" is currently a difficult state, maybe with enough exercise it'll be better.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

Oh man, I should really be getting my seeds started. I think this year I want to keep it simple -- Rutger's slicing tomatoes and Wickline cherry tomatoes, basil... maybe not much else. We have this tiny little yard and all my hopeful potted citrus trees really want a big share of that sunlight.

I'm looking forward to some day having a few acres again and the luxury to have a sprawling garden and making way too much work to do in it. :-)

[greenstorm]

Gosh, citrus. Are any of them fruiting yet?

What do you like about those tomatoes?

[squirrelitude]

None are fruiting, no. I'm still learning how to take care of them properly, and have ended up killing one of the biggest ones that was probably closest to fruiting. I keep overwatering them by mistake. They *really* want their soil to dry out on the regular, so I have to keep them in small pots, and sometimes I underwater them instead and a handful of leaves crisp up and fall off. But... I think they'll be very rewarding in a few years.

Growing up, we had potted citrus that we'd bring in for the winter, and we'd get these lovely scented citrus blossoms and then, eventually, fruit -- lemon and calamondin orange, mostly. My dad now has Chang Sha tangerine, Persian lime, red lime, Meyer's lemon, and I think a few kinds of orange. I've got some of those as well, plus who-knows-what (possible hybrids) grown from grocery store citrus -- dekopon, kumquat, cara cara orange. Most of them are still just a year or two old. If I treat them well (and actually start giving them the fertilizer they want) I might get fruit in about 5-7 years.

The tomatoes are just ones that seem to have worked out well for me. Nothing particularly special about the fruit. My dad recommended Rutgers because it does well in hot summers, unlike a lot of tomatoes, and in practice has done just fine in the Boston area summers. I seem to recall that Ozark Pink was similar, but I have a memory of mild anxiety around those -- we grew a row of those back in Virginia one year during a hot, wet summer and the plants grew *enormous*, growing up the cage and down the outside and then out across the ground a little, in some cases even crumpling the otherwise-sturdy cages and requiring the addition of heavy-duty metal fence posts for support. So those would probably work too, haha!

[greenstorm]

Gosh, your climate. I've never lived anywhere that didn't have trouble ripening tomatoes. My trials this year are hoping that at least some ripen before frost!

Will those citrus go in the ground at some point? I know citrus can be hella weird from seed, someone on one of my forums was talking about the difficulties of breeding cold-climate ones. I'm very interested to see how those do for you.

It gets so dry here in winter that I suspect citrus would never overwinter. Someday I'll have a lovely solarium for that purpose.

[squirrelitude]

In the Boston area we've got a long enough growing season, but yeah, the heat will stop some varieties from flowering and setting fruit. It's definitely not a one-variety-fits-all crop. This likely isn't relevant for you, but my dad has had some luck (in Virginia's heat) by growing tomatoes in the shade of other crops -- I think beans or squash or other things that can be trained up poles or wires. He's big into that sort of thing.

The citrus won't go into the ground here, or even back in Virginia. The Changsha tangerines are cold-hardy down to... I don't recall exactly, somewhere in the 10-20°F range, but even central Virginia gets too cold for that. My dad has been able to leave some out all winter, but about half died, and that's way too high a fraction for a plant that takes 5-8 years to start fruiting. :-) I think many of the other citrus won't even tolerate freezing.

They do make *lovely* houseplants in the winter, though. The smell of those flowers in the dead of winter really lifts my spirits. (And they do fruit indoors!) My parents keep them in the sun room, but I have to make do so far with LED pendant lights. The house I grew up in—the one my parents built, and later sold—had a solar greenhouse attached to the south side, and I *deeply* miss the warmth, the smell of warm soil and green growing things, when there's snow and cold outside.

[greenstorm]

A warm greenhouse as a child? What a blessing.

Plant lights during the winter are one of the things that keep me relatively sane during our very short days up here. I never did do the greens I expected this year, but I always have a bunch of named african violets or scented geraniums or something going.