JB:
I am in mid-Minn. with two gardens , one in the St. Cloud area and another 55 miles South of there.
Right now my North garden is under well over two feet of snow, while the South garden last time I was there was under a little over a foot.
The one up North is where snow gets blown when I blow snow so it get far more than nature sends up that way.
The South one can/could be done earlier than the North but both usually get done within a week of each other.
I have not started seeds indoors for twenty years, tho I still have the gear to do it, so with exceptions , I plant from early May to the 1st week in June depending on weather. (One Grand Father planted potatoes on May Day weather permitting.)
Back in the nineties and oughts when we had some early , early warm springs, I had corn in the ground by April and managed to grow some very long term to dent South American, dent corn. (I grow it for my enjoyment; of the varieties of OP corn, dent, flour or sweet in packets, I have succesfully grown at least 90 percent)
I had a bad knee from landscaping while wearing shorts when I used to knee on class 2 granite while screeding. It had gotten bad enough that when I got out of a chair I looked like Tim Conway's old man; so after twenty years I finally went to see a specialist, at my regular doctors advice.
The Orthopedist spent about twenty minute twisting and rubbing my knee during which time he managed to get back to close to where it was 20 years earlier.
Took a little effort on my part and secondary visits for other leg and ankle annoyances but now it is absolutely the best it has been in twenty years.
The North garden gets radishes, squash, chiles, tomatoes, onions, potatoes and usually sweet corn, plus any odd ball veggie. that I might hanker for any given year.
The South one gets Potatoes, Corn and Squash occasionally an odd ball veggie.
I put the leaf mulch from 12 to 16 inches deep over the potatoes (comes from covering my rose gardens in winter) so they stay moist and mostly weed free, but the extreme drought we had in mid-Minn. last year put a crimp on the South garden even with the mulch.
Stinkin turkeys killed half of the corn plots and automobile problems did not let me get down there often enough so the lack of water made a mockery of the corn.
I have been digging potatoes for fifty plus years and this was the first time, I plant deep 8 to 10 or more inches, that I was digging potatoes ten inches down out of dry ground.
Normally you prefer drier ground for digging potatoes but the ground was so hard, I watered it to make digging easier.
Looking, on-line , at long distance weather forecasts, I do not think I will be putting any thing
in the ground early this year, with the possible exception of potatoes.
I used to use hay/straw bales in the Corn rows to control weeds, the hay mow is empty, so when my car finally is ready again, I will have to drive to a farm and get a trailer load or two of bales, as I did not enjoy spending 4 hours on my hands and knees pulling weeds.
