The Minnesota Farm Woman

Once again, a mail-order garden company has let me down. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I got my honeyberry plants in good shape…and about six weeks too  early. They are now being coddled and stroked on my kitchen windowsill, and I hope they live long enough to put in the ground June 1.  I also got my bright red tomato trays, which should “increase tomato yields for tons of mouth-watering goodness” and my bean towers came March 1, three months before I needed them. What is missing? The ONE thing I needed early:  The hoop houses.  I had big plans for starting lettuce and spinach early, and the hoop houses would protect them from our Zone-3-in-a good-year Minnesota weather. They could then be moved over to protect our strawberries from hungry birds.  I get email messages every once in a while:  “Expect delivery by March 15   April 12  April 25 May 10  June 1. ” Nope, I don’t expect them until sometime in 2013. Those strawberry plants are looking good, too.  Purchased locally and planted last summer, we should have a bumper crop in June.  My feathered friends circled above me this weekend as I was  weeding the patch, and I think I heard them inviting their cousins for summer fruit salad.    A couple of years ago, I ordered some strange-looking Finnish Fingerling Potatoes. Always loving the unusual, I had a hard time deciding just which potato to grow that year, but being of proud Finnish heritage, I passed on all the others. I sent my order in January, and eagerly awaited their arrival, come spring. “We will ship according to your USDA planting zone.”  My order arrived in early April, WAY too early for the strawberry plants that lived for a few shivering  days  before they froze to death on my chilly breezeway. The potatoes would have been fine, except they didn’t come. The enclosed note said “shipping Strange-Looking Finnish Potatoes in a separate order. ”  The next few communications were: “Expected shipping date will be April 15  May 10 and then, ‘we’re sorry for the inconvenience, but there are no more Strange-Looking Finnish Potatoes available this season.’ ” By that time, there was not a seed potato to be found anywhere. I learned my lesson. I really have. I vowed not to order any more plants or gardening equipment through the mail, but I had a fairly large credit from last year’s fiasco when I ordered a Garden “plants from your USDA zone will be sent” Grab Bag and I got banana plants “able to withstand temperatures to 0 degrees.”  Obviously someone packing these had a good sense of humor or hasn’t been north of the Mason-Dixon line.  I will have to figure out some way to keep those strawberry-loving birds and all their cousins out of my garden, though. A scarecrow? Perhaps, but I heard that noise is better.  A radio? I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, if you happen to be taking a Sunday drive in the country and see a wild-haired Farm Woman banging on a big pot with a wooden spoon and screaming into the sky about strawberries,  just honk and wave. No need to make any phone calls. Everyone around here is used to me by now.