Early Spring Garden
story & photography by David Wagoner
Looking at the forecast – repeatedly – looking at soil moisture – ditto – the gardener’s mind is increasingly one-track at this time of year. We can feel the tremors that signal spring’s full-on eruption at the Holly Hill Inn. And despite the many perils that may come with spring, the regenerative forces at work in the warming earth beneath our feet call us to wildly optimistic action: sowing, planting, gardening with abandon.
Plans being brought to life by the Holly Hill DirtWorks team have a new mill to pass through – an 18’ x 24’ greenhouse, newly constructed and covered – and on certain days now, even hot! In this inaugural greenhouse production, nothing is off the table, as we learn week-by-week what’s possible in the microclimate at the Hill, and discover how much more we can do with our tropical little space.
Seed by seed, flowers, herbs, and vegetables are starting to grow, many in flats and pots indoors, protected from the cold, but also some directly in the ground. The planting season is well underway!
So far, the flats have mostly been sown with cool weather vegetables – lettuce, kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, and the like. But also herbs like parsley, dill, rosemary, and cutting celery, and some have even been potted up from their germination trays. And we’ve gotten an early start on flowers like calendula, cornflowers, and poppies.
Riskier, but worth a try, is the early sowing indoors of summer stuff like tomatoes, peppers and basil. In case the threat of frost passes by earlier than usual this spring, we want to be prepared with plants at the ready! We’ll hold off on larger plantings of those, so as not to put our main summer crop at risk.
Aside from the crops above, there’s a lot coming up in the ground, as lettuce, spinach, carrot, and radish seeds were all sown during the past few weeks. Onion sets were planted shoulder to shoulder for an early crop of spring onions. And yes, snap peas are in the ground, too.
Last year, in the newly created Sundial Garden, we increased basil production by leaps and bounds. We grew, and regrew after multiple cuttings, a multitude of varieties to meet the kitchen’s demand. They included Genovese, mammoth, lemon, Thai, and holy, just to name a few.
That Sundial Garden was recently tilled to double its size so we could increase the planting of chives, parsley, thyme and rosemary. For us to pull off a substantial increase of rosemary, the greenhouse will be key, as Kentucky winter cold typically sets it back even more than the eager harvesting by chefs. We hope to keep rosemary growing year round, lending its piney fragrance to the humid atmosphere of our little plant factory while we work.
In the meantime, our DirtWorks gardening efforts are about to grow beyond the production of edibles of the horticultural sort to be served up in our restaurants, or flowers to grace our dining rooms. We’ll be potting plant starts and packaging seeds for your home garden. As spring beauties begin to blanket the lawn at Holly Hill Inn, we’re planning garden tours and other happenings.
And when Derby Day arrives, we hope you’ll join us for a magical celebration in true Kentucky style! Details coming soon.
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