Do we have a sense of weather beyond what we feel directly?

We experience weather through our regular senses all the time, of course. We see the clouds building, smell the ozone, petrichor and geosmin of rain approaching and passing. We hear the pitter patter on the roof and wind in the trees, feel the changing temperatures on our skin.

Some of us even feel weather in our bones, literally. For years after I had a plate put in my leg to fix a broken fibula, I felt a deep, painful ache with the sudden change in barometric pressure that comes before a storm.

This week, I started wondering if we have another kind of weather sense, one that's direct and felt, but not in the way of the 5 senses.

When we were packing up for the day on Tuesday, the construction crew needed a tarp to cover their load of debris to haul to the recycling center. We didn't have an extra, so we borrowed the one that was covering our outdoor lumber storage.

As we grabbed the tarp, Carlos asked me, "Are you sure it's not going to rain?"

"I'm sure," I said. "From mid-May onwards, we might get some foggy mist, but we're done with rain by now."

Ha!

Tuesday night saw heavy downpours in a town about 40 miles away. Thankfully we stayed dry, but a proper storm came along the next night. By that point, the guys had brought the tarp back, and we had covered our newly built framing that's not even close to water tight.

I arrived Thursday morning to a cold, wet construction site.

The tarps weren't perfect, but I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if we had left things uncovered like the night before!

This is what I'm thinking about when I talk about a sense of weather beyond what we experience in the moment: That felt sense of what weather is right for right now.

As a teenager, I put my mattress outside on the patio and left it there, sleeping under the stars from May to October, with never any thought of rain. It was a simple truth of the Bay Area climate - no rain during the summer, except for *really* weird occasions.

How do we know what weather is appropriate for a season? Is it something learned from other people? Is it an ingrained memory circuit accumulating sensory data over years and years? Is there a word for this sense that isn't quite a sense, but also kind of is?

These days, with the weather doing unusual stuff, this sense of weather has a new dimension. A weirdness that I can't put my finger on.

On the one hand, I know, intellectually, that it rains in May now, and that the chances of summer rain have been increasing over the last years to the point where it shouldn't be surprising anymore. I really should know by now to check the forecast before leaving vulnerable materials uncovered!

On the other hand, summer rain is wrong, in a real, felt sense.

So much of our gardening relies on that sense of weather, climate and season. Sometimes of course, we plant by the calendar. But just as often, we go to the nursery when it feels right.

One of the reasons I think seed starting is tricky is that our innate sense of planting is more tied to the transplant time than the sowing time. With seeds you have to be more in your head, using a calendar or a chart of some kind.

If you haven't checked it out yet, try our free printable planner to help you figure out which seeds to start when.

Or, if you just want to know what to sow now, here are a few options that should work for just about everyone in the Northern Hemisphere this week:

🌱 Sow in pots right now: Basil, lettuce (heat tolerant varieties), cucumber, zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, heat tolerant greens like sokoyokoto

🌱 Direct sow right now (poke into the ground without starting first in pots): Beans, zucchini, pumpkins, melons, corn, sunflowers.

How's the weather where you are? Is it weird? Do you feel strange when the actual weather doesn't match your sense of what it should be doing?

I'm grateful for May rain, even if it's weird. The plants have perked up, and everything smells really nice.

If you're interested in going deeper into changing weather and how it's affecting growing conditions specifically in Northern California, here's a podcast by the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association interviewing climate scientist Daniel Swain about the challenges and opportunities of our changing climate.

Happy Seedurday,

Anne

P.S. It's not happening super soon, but we are going to be raising prices this summer. We haven't raised prices in over 4 years, but all of our costs have been going way up. If you're planning ahead to purchase more pots, I just wanted to give you a heads up that there will be a price increase before September.

When you’re ready, here are some more ways I can help you grow a thriving garden from seed:

1. Plan your seed-starting schedule with our ​free printable planner.​

2. Download the free ​Orta Seed Starting Handbook with all the basics you need to succeed with seeds.​

3. Take the guesswork out of watering with Orta Self-Watering Pots. (Find discounted factory seconds here!)

4. Join the Orta Seed Club to have 5 hand-picked, unusual & high-yielding varieties delivered to you every season.

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