I was talking with a friend at lunch today and of course, the topic of this spring's cold weather came up. She is a gardener as well so we began to compare notes. I told her that I had peas, spinach, lettuce, beets, potatoes and Brussels sprouts in but they really weren't growing because of the cold weather. I then expected her to list off the same kind of items for her garden but her response surprised me. She said she didn't have anything planted. I thought, she must be really busy and just hasn't had time to get in the garden. No, that wasn't the situation at all. She told me that she never plants anything until after the Ice Man Days. I started laughing since I had never heard of this before. She went on to explain that it was an old story she had heard from several local vegetable farmers. The story goes that you never plant any seeds or seedlings, no matter how warm it gets in the spring, until a certain time in May has past.
When I sat back down at my desk after lunch I had to Google Ice Man Days in May. Sure enough there it was.
Saint Pancras, Saint Servatius and Saint Mamertus are called the Ice Saints. Their festival days are May 11th, 12th and 13th. People in Medieval Europe believed that there was always a cold snap of weather around these dates. In fact, students of Galileo diligently recorded weather from 1655 to 1670 and actually confirmed cold snaps during or around these dates. Farmers began to use the festival dates as their safe planting dates. As long as they planted their crops after the "Ice Man Days", they knew they would avoid damaging cold weather.
Hopefully we have passed our Ice Man Days this week. Happy planting.
Two pictures of my slow growing garden.
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