[media-credit name="Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post" align="aligncenter" width="495"][/media-credit] Traditional violas, like pansies, took a blizzard’s beating and came back to bloom again.
Lots of gardeners got heartbroken by April’s blasts of snow and cold weather. How the fruit harvests will fare remains to be seen. In my own garden, there is reason to rejoice. Violas, above, got flattened by the spring blizzards, especially that nasty slap on May 1. But by Friday, they were showing their irrepressible little faces again.
[media-credit name="Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post" align="aligncenter" width="495"][/media-credit] Tulips bounce back after being sheltered under plastic tubs.
During two of April’s four big snows, I grabbed up plastic tubs from the garage and put them over clusters of tulips, weighting them down with rocks so they wouldn’t blow away to Greeley in the wind. And even though I failed to cover them during the heaviest snow, here they are, battered but unbowed and ready to bloom.
[media-credit name="Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post" align="aligncenter" width="495"][/media-credit] Sugar snap peas, broccoli raab and radishes were covered during some of the April snows, but not others.
And finally, the nascent veggie bed got covered during two out of four snowstorms, too. I had nearly given up on the purple-blushed sugar snap peas I’d bought from Abbondanza Organic Seeds in Longmont, they were so slow to germinate. But they finally pushed through the soil, and I was sure as heck not going to lose them to the May 1 blizzard. I covered them with plastic, then cardboard boxes, then a wool blanket. Oh, who am I kidding? I piled everything ready to hand on top of them and their companion plants, a row of radishes and two rows of broccoli raab.
And you know what? The row of snap peas at the other end of the raised bed, which I didn’t cover, and its companion kohlrabi plants, are doing just fine, too. My methods are as unscientific as they come. If I’m not too cold or tired I run out and cover things, and if I AM too cold and too tired, I don’t. I have the luxury of earning a living by writing about gardening, and not gardening itself, and if it were the other way around I’d probably starve. So I really can’t tell you whether covering cold-season crops that have just popped above the soil matters.
But my little snap-pea plants have achieved the first three inches of their advertised 6-foot height, and I ate my first snap-pea shoots this morning. I’ll take that tiny, sweet triumph all the way to the kitchen.
