Frost Date

The average last frost date for Columbia, SC is April 17th. Emphasis on "average". The accuracy of this date could make or break my gardening success this year. You know how cherries and peaches and other tree-borne fruits are one price this year and another the next year, possibly lower? This difference in price is caused by the accuracy of the estimated last frost date; if an orchard starts to bud during a random week of summer temperatures in the middle of winter (welcome to SC, get used to it) and then a deep frost hits two weeks later the hopes of a bountiful spring harvest (as well as the poor farmer's income) will be dying on the branches.

The frost date plays a similar game with me. My livelihood is in no way attached to my gardening success but my hopes for a beautiful spring are no less important. For the past week I've struggled to make a decision about starting my seeds indoors: start them too soon and they'll be dying for space before an outdoor planting is possible, start them too late and they won't be as big as they could be. So I held the packets in my hands, I looked at the pretty pictures on the front, I thought of the glory of a 12 ft tall sunflower..... and then I gave in. That's right, tonight I bought a little seed starter indoor greenhouse and those little peat moss pellets couldn't swell fast enough. I cut open the packets and poured the seeds into little labeled cups and once I had decided upon a reasonable method for keeping track of what was planted where I started pushing seeds in. I got a row and a half done and then I stopped. I didn't know what to plant next. I picked up one cup then another. Should I try starting some peppers in this row? What about some columbines? What if I plant to many? What if they die?

The problem, it seems, is that once you start planting failure becomes possible. When the seeds are in the packet and I look at the picture on the front any gardening dreams I have seem possible; "This", I proclaim, "is what my lupines will look like"! When I have those seeds in my hand I am suddenly the master of their fate. Suddenly everything that could go wrong is running through my mind: too much water, not enough water, too much light, not enough light, too hot, too cold and on and on...... STOP!!! Its just flowers. Even if I screw everything up (unlikely) some of these plants are going to flourish. That's just the way it is. No species ever got ahead by requiring conditions so exact that even the slightest variance from them meant that not a single specimen matured and reproduced; not humans, not animals and certainly not plants. So, regardless of my amateur gardener status these flowers will grow and flourish. And so will you and I.