Comments on: Mud Season: A primer for newcomers and Southerners

By: Rained cats and dogs

Rained cats and dogs — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:32:44 +0000

[...] has officially begun. Kathy Purdy, at the Cold Climate Gardening blog has a nice primer about mud season. As she puts it: “And so it goes, for about two months. One day it’s early spring, then [...]

By: Mud Season Chores: Pruning

Mud Season Chores: Pruning — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:59:51 +0000

[...] season, despite its fickle weather, not only has color, but its own set of gardening chores. For those of us living in cold climates, [...]

By: Jenn

Jenn — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:31:20 +0000

Where I was in Michigan we had very ‘open’ winters with lots of freeze/thaw cycles. One of the things that first attracted me to your site was the fact that my ‘zone five’ garden killed a lot of ‘zone five’ plants due to not having that protective blanket of snow.

That sort of weather makes for a relative short mud season in most places. In the HoggleBog garden, as the name implies, we were wet for months in the spring, but that was a high water table = less mud.

By: Donalyn

Donalyn — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:20:25 +0000

No January thaw her this year and the one in February didn’t come close to actually thawing much snow. It finally melted in the rain last weekend, but we still have piles where we plowed it. As cold as it got, I was very thankful for the thick snow cover. Two days ago it was nearly 60 and this morning it was 8 – spring in NYS!

By: Don

Don — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:25:27 +0000

Oh, very nice piece. I ended up flat on my face in the (muddy) woods today.

By: Mary S.

Mary S. — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:41:24 +0000

Good explanation, Kathy. We have mud season here in Minnesota — though not yet, I’m sorry to say — but I think of it as sump pump season because that is often the time of year basements start taking on all that water with nowhere to go and the sump pump (if you are lucky enough to have one) starts running. After 12 years in a house without a sump pump or a mudroom, we built a new home with both, and have been here 10 dry and mud-resistant years.

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:51:32 +0000

Wow, I had forgotten from my time in the NE what winter to spring is like up there. Meanwhile, everyone here is racing to get things in the ground before summer cooks them.

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:32:36 +0000

Lynn, the definition of workable soil is soil that is not too wet and not too dry. When you squeeze a handful, it should not remain in a lump, and certainly water should not drip from your clenched hand. So for the most part, I'd say your soil is not workable yet. If you disturb wet clay soil by digging, tilling, and especially stepping on it, you run the risk of compacting it and compressing the air out of it. However, spinach does best when you get it the ground as early as possible. We have difficulty planting it soon enough that we can get a good harvest before it bolts. Margaret Roach likes to plant it in very late fall. (But I see you already found that post.) So, let's make an exception to the rule of workable soil for spinach. Here's how I would minimize the damage:

Do not step on the garden soil. Keep your feet on the grass or path and just reach into the bed.
Do not dig or turn over the soil. Hand pull any visible weeds, taking care to disturb the soil as little as possible.
Use something straight and thin, such as a ruler or a thin board to press slits into the soil, and sow your seeds in the slits.
Cover the seeds with compost or something you can get from a bag or container so you don't disturb the soil. That's assuming spinach seed needs to be covered at all. I can't remember. If rain is in the forecast, the action of rain on the soil might be enough to get them covered.

I take courage from the fact that you said "the high end of the veg patch." Presumably it is better drained and more workable than the low end.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:36:03 +0000

Kathy! I’d heard about mud season in Colorado, where the many feet of snow finally melts and it’s muddy for a month, but now I’m experiencing our version. Our lazy creek is running, and Six Mile Creek right down the road is roaring! Good thing I love my rubber boots (and they are so in on campus There is so much water in our basement, being collected in the underground gutters and pumped out into the ditch every 6 minutes, that when the furnace stops blowing, you can hear the water just trickling like a faucet is on. The good thing about all this is that I guess “the soil can be worked” finally? I’m thinking of planting spinach this weekend–at the high end of the veg patch. Great post

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:57:26 +0000

We also have an artesian well, but it stops flowing out of the top during the driest parts of the summer. And we get those mini-volcanoes, too. And just like you, not so much this year. Or perhaps, not yet?