Spring officially arrives tomorrow, and I can practically hear all you impatient gardeners revving your engines. Haven't we waited all winter for just this moment?
I don't want to be a kill-joy, but in many places it's still too soon to work the good earth. The sandy soils of South Jersey drain well and warm up quickly in the spring, but in northern locations, where clay-like soils prevail, the earth is still sodden, cold and stiff.
In the northwestern Highlands of North Jersey it's mud season, which can make you feel like a frustrated New Englander. When snow melts and spring rains fall but the subsoil remains frozen, water has no place to go. That's when you get mud, epic mud, which persists until underground layers of earth finally thaw.
Working the soil too soon will squash the life out of it -- literally. You'll destroy the soil's structure, leaving behind rock-hard clods that would require a sledge hammer to pulverize. You'll also compact the soil by squeezing out the air between soil particles, that's air plant roots need every bit as much as water and nutrients.
Before you think it's time to get a jump on spring by dragging out the tiller or the garden spade, stop, look and feel. Grab a handful of soil and squeeze it into a ball. If it holds its shape like a mud pie, it should not be tilled up, dug in or even stepped on.
Soil isn't ready to be messed with until that handful you've compressed crumbles at a touch or, if dropped from waist height, shatters into bits on impact. That point will come when the sun gets warm enough to wick excess moisture from the soil -- probably in another month, weather gods willing.
I do have an answer to the itchy-fingered gardeners' blues: a cold frame. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's a bottomless box with a sloping, transparent lid that concentrates the energy of the sun and creates a warm, sheltered spot for seedling plants.
An old-fashioned, low-tech gardening aid, it's the next best thing to that heated greenhouse many of us would like but few of us can afford. If you had a cold frame, you could be playing in the dirt (albeit a limited amount of it) right away.
One big advantage is that seedlings grown outdoors in a cold frame are automatically "hardened off," or acclimated to weather conditions. Seedlings grown indoors need some transitional coddling before they can go in the garden.
A cold frame also is an ideal place to shelter purchased seedlings until they are ready to go into the ground. Spring weather is fickle, don't forget, and late frosts can undo the best-laid plans.
You can easily fabricate a homemade cold frame with treated lumber for the sides and an old window sash for the top -- check out simple plans at gardengatemagazine.com or doityourself.com. This type of cold frame stays where you built it, but the newer, European-made models with aluminum frames and polycarbonate glazing are so light and portable you can move them around. They also collapse easily and can be stored when not in use.
I have a pair of Juwel cold frames (just Google the brand) that are my pride and joy, if a little baffling to assemble the first few times. I set them in the sun while temperatures are cool for early seed-starting. Around mid-May, when the first batch of seedlings has been planted out, I move them to a shadier spot where I can continue to propagate perennial seedlings or temporarily stash late-arriving mail order plants.
Bear in mind that cold frames can do their job of intensifying sunlight a little too well. Even on a cold day, temperatures inside can reach the mid-80s, enough to "cook" your tender little plantlets. One solution is to prop the lid up on warm afternoons and close it at night or on cold days.
If you're a little forgetful, as I can be, take the modern approach and buy a nifty, automatic opener that pops the lid when temperatures reach a pre-set point above 60 degrees. It will sense falling temperatures and shut the lid back down so you won't be lying in bed fretting about your plant babies. Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com) is one mail order retailer; these gadgets go for about $50.
They say you can fool Mother Nature, but I'm not so sure. Let's just say that having a cold frame for early spring gardening means never having to say "Too soon, too soon."