The possibility of frost strikes fear in gardeners all the way to the tips of their green thumbs. Frost warnings are serious shit. Like tornado warnings for your plants. Batten down the the hatches or risk death. Our head gardener is pretty proud of his “frost intuition,” which is why our tomatoes, peppers and basil aren’t in the ground yet. Good thing, because last night we got hit.

Rick’s the bossman because he’s got patience and 30 years of Yooper gardening experience. He lets me be in charge of the flowers and I would have planted the marigolds, cosmos and zinneas a few weeks ago had the he not held me back. 

We were already pushing it by planing the squash and corn before the Corn Planing Moon. When this last frost alarm went off, which the bossman saw coming all month, we spent a few hours covering up our frost-sensitive crops. (It took us hours because the bossman doesn’t do anything half-assed and we had to construct little tents over the corn, squash, bean and potato beds.)

Part of the idea with planing by the moon is that the amount of moisture in the soil is affected by the lunar phase and frost is more likely around a full moon, at least that is what the bossman tells me. A gardener friend of our did an experiment and the seeds she planted according to the moon cycle yielded plants twice the size of those plunked randomly into the soil.

Only the most daring of north woods gardeners put their tomatoes in before the late May/early June full moon. A friend who planted his tomatoes early in May — at least three or four frosts ago — has caused my hubby great distress. Rick would never fall prey to such impetuousness. Our planting cycle is determined by the his trusty weather radio, the lunar calendar and the head gardener’s “frost intuition.” 

He’s feeling pretty smug about this last frost. We didn’t get suckered in by Memorial Day planting traditions or warm spring days; so, when a cloudless night during the waxing moon yields the deadly kiss of frost, we live to garden another day.