Today, in a sense, we missed a bullet. Last week at this time, we were sweltering. I am already tan. About 2 weeks ago, we were congratulating ourselves that this was the earliest we had ever had our garden ready. We have some tomatoes, I planted the potatoes and we put in peppers, eggplants and zuchinnis. The strawberries have already set fruit and it is beginning to look like the biggest raspberry harvest yet. That is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
The neighbor who turns over our garden with his tractor, Dede, is an old farmer who has a magnificent garden up the road. While I was busy planting, Dede's plot sat idle.
Then it hit me, La Lune Rousse. None of the old people around here have started to plant yet. Not any of those who really know about stuff anyway....
La Lune Rousse is based on the period of the first new moon after Easter. It ends with next new moon. The start of the period was April 14 and it ends May 13th.
In the peasant folklore, the date May 13th is the last date that a frost will occur on. Hence, for them it is just common sense, based on centuries of collective wisdom. You just don't plant until La Lune Rousse, no matter how nice it is.
So, Monday, it clouded up and the wind really began to blow and temperature dropped. There was a huge storm in Southern france that did lots of damage on the Mediterrenean coast. It was pretty chilly yesterday and today, to my horror, the light rain began to turn into sleet around 2 pm. It snowed heavily for 3 hours! I looked out the window in despair and took this picture of the garden coverend with snow.
Then the snow stopped, a heavy fog settled over the area and kept raining lightly. In the next few hours, the temperature began to rise almost 3 degrees celsius.
The high tomorrow is in the 60's...the plants will just shake this off and resume growing, but I will never ever never again ignore the lesson of La Lune Rousse!
2 comments:
Snow in May. How terribly depressing especially after that wonderful warm April. We are enjoying 80's but it is to cool to the 50's by this weekend, although no snow is in the forecast, the lows will be in the 30's. We'll just cover up the tender stuff and wait for another warm spell next week.
As far as waiting for La Lune Rousse with the older farmers there, if they never take a chance on early planting then they will never enjoy early berries and early tomatoes.
I have a friend near Detroit who wanted to grow his own tomatoes from seed this winter [not on my advice] and they are so 'precious' to him at this point that he has not yet put them out to 'harden-off.' By the time they are ripe, tomatoes will be selling for 50¢ a pound.
I planted 10 couer de boeuf tomato plants in the ground...they seem to have survived and this morng it is warmer than it was all day yesterday.
I have giant russian "chernobyl" tomatoes in the little greenhouse and a few red cherry tomato plants.
I just did a survey of the garden and the only damage was that the weight of the snow bent young plants...everything will recover.
It's incredibly foggy here as the weather changes. We needed the precip!
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