How Does Your Garden Grow?

Today was the day. I just could not hold out any longer. I just had to plant something in my garden!
I do not like to plant too early. I do not like hauling out our huge heavy tarps and unfurling them over my tiny plants in the evening just to reverse the whole ordeal the next morning after the threat of frost has passed. I learned last year, though, that when you live in South Dakota, no month is really safe to start a garden. I believe it was June 2 the last time I had to get the tarps last summer. It was pretty silly since my frost-bit garden would have been the least of our concerns, but nevertheless, I had put in too much work to let Jack Frost take it away that far into the growing season!
Since David started planting corn in the fields today, Nathan thought we should plant our corn, too. I agreed. First I set up my grid in approximate square feet with stakes and twine. We then planted the sweet corn in rows beside the grid, but the rest of the plants will be planted in the squares. (This is the same sort-of square foot method I used last year.) I have already put in my order with David for a little shot of nitrogen when the farm sprayer contains the correct fertilizer. We don't want to repeat our fun-sized corn from last year, even if it was tasty despite its tiny size!
Yet to be planted in our garden are carrots, green beans, beets, lettuce, sugar snap peas, pumpkins, sunflowers, watermelon and cherry tomatoes. I also need to replant basil so I can make pesto again. Yum!
It still amazes me how the gardening bug has bit me these past few years. I like to think it is the genes passed down from my Grandpa & Grandma Joachim whose entire yard was a garden in the summer. My Grandma is nearing 91 and she still plants a smaller version of that same garden. My Grandpa Kallas has also had some garden success since he and my grandma moved to town--could it be 20 years ago? Wow--that seems totally impossible that it has been that long since we helped them move from their farm, but I remember I was wearing my New Kids on the Block earrings and my Harvard sweatshirt (a tribute to NKOTB's hometown) that day . . . so it must have been. Why DO I remember that?
ANYWAY, back to gardening. My Grandpa Kallas is the one who told me of the tradition of planting potatoes by the full moon on Good Friday night. It never fails, but every year we reach Good Friday and the ground is still too frozen to even think about planting anything in it. I wonder if people still do that or if the older generation just likes to laugh at young gardeners trying to chip away at ice in the dark after coming home from church on Good Friday.
My Grandpa also has asparagus in his yard and I am finally starting some this year. Asparagus takes a year to get a crop. Because I can be impatient with such things, it has taken me nine years to plant asparagus because I didn't want to wait another year to eat it. I could have been enjoying asparagus for eight years already if I had just done it right away.
Now I should have an asparagus crop just in time for David & my tenth anniversary dinner next June!