Re: Which vegetables can be planted this month?

Billy said:
>
>
>In article <20080416-104723.15.0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Pat Kiewicz <kiewicz@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>> The tomatoes should be started indoors now, for transplant outside
>> later, after the days are consistantly warms and night time 
>>temperatures will reliably be above 50F (10C) degrees. 
>
>My book (Gardener's Bible) says ground temp should be 70F (20C). 
For germination?  Or for transplanting outdoors?  I'd agree with that
as a tomato germination temperature.

When the night time temperatures are consistantly above 50F here,
the daytime temps average in the mid-70s and above.  Plenty warm
enough to transplant tomatoes out.  (Wait a bit more for peppers and
eggplants, though.)

>Corn needs ground temp of 80F for germination and 65F-75F to grow.
>But these temps work for you. Hmmm.

Corn *needs* a ground temp of 80F for germination?  I think you
are confusing maybe optimum with minimum.   I can guarantee that 
the soil temp is nowhere near 80F when I seed my earliest corn 
(anywhere after May 10, usually).   The daily mean air temp is 
nearing 60F in mid-May.

I'm pretty conservative.  The farmer's start seeding corn before me.
Corn would be a heap more expensive (and the corn belt much, much
smaller) if you had to wait until ground temps were 80F.

Grr.  I can't remember the term for using the sequence of blooms and
such to 'tell time' ("when the Forsythia bloom" "when the oak leaves 
are the size of squirrels' ears" etc.)    

Got it! Phenology!  Some of it is maybe bogus (predicting weather
months in advance) but the use of it to set planting dates ("potatoes 
when the shadbush blooms") actually coresponds pretty well with all 
the 'degree days ac***ulated' figures as guidelines to local conditions.

Anyway, things are running late this year (locally) compared to the 
last  few years, based on blooms and buds.  Or maybe I should say,
back to the 'old normal' this year.

I keep an eye on the oak trees and sycamores (that'd be plane trees,  
to those  across the Atlantic) to cue me in to how any particular
spring is going.  Once the sycamores finally begin leafing out, the 
weather will be reliably warm.

-- 
Pat in Plymouth MI ('someplace.net' is comcast)
   
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)