Planting

Q: With our winter that won't stop, what would you suggest about planting dates for the vegetable garden? Our average date for last frost is June 10.

A: If there is one constant about Montana weather, it is its inconstancy. I would ignore the weather of last winter and proceed onward, assuming that this summer's gardening weather and last winter's snows have no connection.

If it were my garden, I would plant vegetables on the usual schedule--provided that the ground has thawed by then, of course. I plant the "hardy" vegetables, the ones that can survive a frost, four weeks before the last average frost date. I plant the tender ones as soon as I expect frosts to be over.

However, with our short gardening season, I use every kind of season extender that I can find, in order to speed up planting. I start early vegetables as soon as the ground can be worked, planting in a cold frame or a tunnel. I make tunnels of heavy row cover, the kind often called "frost blanket," laid over wire hoops. I do not use plastic covers because they are so hard to ventilate. I try to put the cold frame or tunnel in place a few days before planting, so that seeds drop into warm soil.

I gain a week on planting tender seeds like beans and corn by laying row cover over the planted rows. That warms the soil a few degrees. By the time that the seedlings appear, the risk of frost is past. Vegetables that go into the garden as plants, like tomatoes, I set out four weeks before the last frost, in walls of water.

Q: I would like to save seeds from carrots that I left in the ground over winter. How long will it take for them to make seeds?

A: In their second year of growth, biennial carrots have to make first leaves, then a flower stalk. The flowers will bloom, make seeds, and ripen them to brown before you can harvest. Expect the process to take all summer. Even more important will be assuring that your seed strain stays pure. Since carrots can cross-pollinate with other carrots and with wild relatives, you will want to guarantee that bees cannot reach them. Once the flower stalks form, grow the plants under netting or lightweight row cover until immature seeds are visible. Only then can you confidently remove the covers.

Of course you want to be sure that your carrots are not a hybrid type. The seeds on any hybrid plant resemble some mixture of distant ancestors. They never produce duplicates of the parent plant.

Q: What should I do about pruning my potentilla (or cinquefoil) bushes? They look as if they need a trim, but maybe I should have done the job last fall. Will I cut off the flower buds if I prune them now?

A: This is a fine time to prune both trees and bushes. They are just coming out of dormancy, so pruning cuts will not stress them out. Besides, it is a lot easier to see where to cut when branches are not hidden in a cloud of full-sized leaves.

Some people recommend pruning early-flowering shrubs, like lilacs, after they have bloomed. That is simply because those shrubs make their flower buds the fall before. If a branch is cut off, of course its flower buds are cut also. But flowers on the rest of the bush are not affected. My opinion is that if the bush needs pruning, it should be pruned. Leaving a too-long stem in case it might have a flower or two does not seem a rational choice.

Late pruning--or summer pruning--does not apply to shrubs like potentilla which flower in mid to late summer. They make their flower buds in the spring, developing and opening them in just one growing season.

Master gardener Molly Hackett's motto is "Never trust a gardener with clean fingernails." She shares her gardening expertise in her "Dirty Fingernails" column in the first issue of the month. She welcomes reader questions related to gardening, pest management, plants, soils and anything in between. Those of general interest will appear in the column. Please submit your questions to her via email to mhackett@centric.net, call 406-961-4614 or mail questions to 1384 Meridian Rd, Victor, MT 59875.