One of the threads here at Greenerminds is to record the transformation of my garden this year. Many gardeners keep a garden journal, and this is mine. I want to be able to come back next year and see where I was in development at various points in time.

With that said, I want to indicate what I believe the final frost date for 2008 here in the Rochester, NY area was Wednesday, April 16. Actually I’m a bit south, but not yet in the higher elevations that start about 10 miles south. Officially we’re all in Zone 6 but there are many microclimates and miniclimates. I got some frost on parts of my site yesterday, and it was very light, with a low temperature overnight of around 32° F.

Which meant also that I was able to put out the first seedlings last night, which I’ve been hardening off (taking out during the day, back in at night) for the last two weeks. I put these seedlings in two raised beds I built last summer using a sheet mulch, and the dirt is nice! There were tons of earthworms and other soil activity. Anyway, I put out parsley, cilantro, mesclun, arrugula, tai sai, broccoli raab, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, snap and sugar peas.

I also rented a rototiller for half a day Saturday. I’m only rototilling the swale / paths and where the pond will go, just to make it easier to dig. I’ll do another post in a few days on how the swales and paths go together. I need to get some red or white clover for the paths, and may need to scrounge some mulch for the swales. Fortunately, tons of free organic material is available on the local sides-of-the-road as people do their spring yard “cleaning.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Gardening, Permaculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.