Madison County Democrat

How to Win in Garden

Gamble with Jack Frost

Temperature is the most important limiting factor in all outdoor horticultural activities. Soil can be improved, water can be supplied artificially. But planters are at the mercy of the temperature.

A key-day in the spring, which governs all operations, is the date when in your locality it becomes relatively safe to set out tender plants. In other words, the frost-proof date. This does not mark the beginning of gardening."because seeds of hardy vegetables can be sown as soon as the ground has thawed out and become dry enough to work. This is usually 30 days before the frost-proof date.

The term frost-proof, moreover, is hardly correct. The weather is too uncertain for that.' There is always the chance that in an exceptional year, a frost will occur long after the average time and many tender things will be nipped. But some risk must always be accepted in gardening.

On the basis of long experience, the weather bureau has prepared a map which divides the country into zones, and established for each zone a date on which the chances are 10 to 1 against a killing frost occurring in the spring. The map accompanies this discussion. Look up your location and talk to your gardening neighbors about their practice, and you will find it easy to decide on the date to accept as safe from frost in your garden.

Of course some years you may win with a long-shot and get a crop from an early planting of a tender crop because of an exceptionally warm spring. If you want to figure the odds against this kind of chance taking, you may estimate that the risk of losing tender plants is exactly doubled, when they are set out two weeks before the frost-proof date."

There is nothing to be gained, moreover, by taking this risk with plants which have been started indoors, since they may be seriously injured by a hard frost which does not kill them, and always do best when they continue growing without a check.