(Watch the soil temperature with a soil thermometer (50 deg. F.) or by observing the neighborhood yellow forsythia. When it starts to bloom, the soil is warm enough.)

The soil thermometer is especially useful because it will tell you if your soil warming techniques have worked well enough to ‘cheat’ the calendar. Even just a few days on this end of the season and another few days on the other end are enough to give you an extra month or more of growing season.

(Okayyyy Bill … let’s see the math on that!)

If you can cheat the calendar a few days in the spring you’ve gained a few days … and that’s it. Good to have, nice to know, worth two ‘atta-boys’ and one pat on the back and not much else. Except that you have learned to defeat Jack Frost in your own garden with your own materials.

But if you can defend the garden against the first frost of next fall (using the skills developed in the spring), you can probably count on 2-3 more weeks until the next one. Michigan is justly famous for its “Indian Summers” … a frost followed by a month or even two of growing weather. However, if the first frost caught you unprepared, you won’t have to worry about the timing of the second one. You’ll be too busy pulling out dead plants and generally feeling sorry for yourself.

Tender vegetables that require both warm air and warm soil are shown below:

• Beans – from seed
• Sweet corn – from seed
• Summer squash – from seed
• Tomatoes – as transplants
• Chinese cabbage
• Chicory (Radicchio)
• Corn
• Cowpea (Black-eyed pea)
• Cucumber
• Melon (all varieties)
• Okra
• Peanut
• Pumpkin
• Rutabaga (Swede)

The seeds are fairly easy to cheat with, but you’ll want to pay attention to what you are doing with any plants you set out on this list.