Fool for the season

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

This is not a joke. I’ll get the annual complaints about not taking our responsibility seriously enough with our April Fools’ issue, but … c’mon.

I love spring. You readers know I’m a dope for the garden, but really, it’s the season that inspires me to dig and repair and work evenings and create. Let me put it this way: I’m glad Kat Kerlin, our on-maternity-leave special projects editor chose this time of year to reproduce. It feels as though my energy is boundless, and I can do things I couldn’t begin to do in the winter.

I’d like to offer my personal congratulations to the teen team that put together our Teen Issue last week. Our high school intern Kelsey Bauder somehow managed a sprint at the end of the race, and it’s that skill that will take her far in this world.

While Kelsey was handling the newspaper, I was out in the garden. I double dug the whole vegetable patch, and so far have planted Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower and peas. This weekend, I expect to add some spinach and lettuce to the mix. Double digging is a process for removing roots and fluffing up the soil in which you basically dig a ditch about 2-feet-wide and 18-inches-deep along one edge of the garden. Then you dig another ditch next to it and fill in the one you just dug with that dirt—and so on across the garden.

The staff and I have another tough month coming up while Kat’s out, but it feels really good to move around out in the sun. Give me about six more weeks, and I’ll be planting some tomatoes and peppers, right about the time the snow disappears from Peavine. (To be honest, that Peavine saw is wrong much of the time—either you lose two weeks of growing time or you plant too early.)

I’m thinking about building a high tunnel (hoop house) this weekend to really extend the growing season. Dare me to plant a tomato or two in these last days of March?