Apparently I’m not alone in feeling a special urgency about gardening this year. Toilet paper isn’t the only thing people are hoarding; seeds are also flying off the shelves. All of a sudden, everyone is a gardener.

Fortunately, like the gardening geniuses we are, we ordered most of our seed in January. When the pandemic struck, I coveted that box of seeds like is was a treasure chest filled with enough booty to buy my way into congress. Yeah, I was feeling pretty smug.

When a friend from Michigan tipped us off on possible shortages of onion and potato seed — something we get locally each spring — I suddenly felt like one of those “toilet paper people”. I MUST find onion seed. We CAN’T live without onions. I might be able to survive without potatoes, but what kind of craziness is going on?!

I filled the Boss in on the situation and he was skeptical, “What? Everyone thinks they are just going to start gardening all of a sudden?”

Yes, duh! People are panic planting.  (He isn’t on social media so he has no idea what the rest of the world is thinking and he can’t imagine starting a garden without a massive planning effort).

After frantically calling around to the local feed and garden stores and interrogating them about their onion and potato seed supply, I finally scored some of the scraggliest looking onion and potato seed we’ve ever seen. If it doesn’t produce, then it is my own fault for panicking instead of hanging tight and waiting until we could find some quality seed.

But I have to admit, having those scraggly onion and potato seeds in our dirty hands is a big relief.

It is still too cold in the Upper Peninsula to do much planting. Patience is required. Not panic.

Here’s to a successful and productive 2020 gardening season!