Thermometers
A few years ago, I bought a soil thermometer for our gardens. It was cheap, and I thought it might be useful to tell when the ground was warm enough for certain types of seeds to germinate. I’m not always the best at fall cleanup, so I ended up just leaving in the ground through a couple winters, and somehow it has disappeared.
I’m debating whether or not I should buy a new one. On the one hand, it get a little thrill of satisfaction when the spring weather comes and the ground starts to warm up. It’s like looking at the forecast and seeing only sunny days on the horizon. On the other hand, I don’t really use that information to inform my gardening behavior. I plant based on some vague calendar in my head, combined with my ability to find time in my schedule for a morning away from work and parenting.
It's funny, isn’t it? There is so much science that goes into gardening. The seed catalogs are full of statistics – average germination rate, days to germination, preferred soil pH, preferred soil temperature. And when it comes down to it, I plant based mostly on how I’m feeling and my past experiences. “Last year, we waited until April to plant lettuce, let’s do that again. But the onions held up nicely even in March, so let’s do that.”
I am sure that some of my gardener friends are cringing right now. Like most hobbies, gardening has two types of people: those that really love to follow the rules and those that don’t. I want to be the first type, I really do. And there is absolutely no doubt that if I listened to that soil thermometer, my plants would be happier and my yield would be better.
Buuuuuut…if it’s a sunny spring day and I have nothing better going on, what am I supposed to do? Just not go outside and plant things? Impossible.
And this is why I love having gardening as a hobby but not to make a living. There are a lot of parts of my life where I have to follow the rules, every single time, or else really bad things can happen. And it’s nice, sometimes, to look at the thermometer sticking out of the ground, telling me it’s too early for green beans, and then turn around and do whatever I want.
