Much-needed garden maintenance

I took advantage of a beautiful Friday to do some much-needed garden maintenance. Unlike container gardens, raised beds need to be weeded periodically. The soil often contains grass and clover seeds. And I'd rather be growing veggies, not grass.

I took out the chard, spinach, and kale. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but these seedlings remained tiny. It's possible that the cold snap we had a couple of weeks ago just did these plants in. We also had a cold April, so the seeds I'd planted never really got going. The spinach was from a start, but had started going to seed -- again a result of the cold snap. I don't know if I'll grow these plants next year. I don't really eat a whole lot of chard (although I'd like to), and I had more success with kale from starts. Maybe I'll read up about these plants this winter and try again.

So much of gardening is trial and error. And a good bit of luck. An ill-timed cold snap can just wipe out a farmer's crop. One of the guys at the Ballard farmers market was telling me last week that many of the Eastern Washington farmers lost some of their spring and summer crops because of the late cold snap. Hopefully they can recover some of their profits with other crops. Farmers always seem to be one bout of bad weather away from bankruptcy.

I moved some plants around in the container garden surrounding my raised bed. I decided to plant my summer starts, and needed to free up some larger containers in order to do so. I moved the herbs into smaller containers, and put zucchini plants in the large pink buckets. Here's hoping I can actually grow a zucchini this year. I'll be hopefully growing yellow zucchini and yellow crookneck squash -- my favorites!

I put a yellow pear and a brandywine tomato in the back, against the trellis. I buried them up to their first set of leaves, as tomatoes grow roots from the stem. A well-developed root system leads to healthier tomatoes. I ordered walls-of-water (basically tomato jackets) from a garden store, and those should be here next week sometime. I want my tomatoes to be nice and warm this summer! Behind the fava beans, I planted a bell pepper. I put Walla Walla sweets in a back corner of the garden, and basil in a container. If it's too cold for the basil, I'll just buy a basil plant from Trader Joe's -- they've got some big beautiful ones for sale!

An ill-timed cold snap could ruin my crops. I'll be hoping that doesn't happen. It's been pretty warm for the last week or so, and I think the mercury will stay above 60 degrees during the day for a little while longer. So I should be safe. And if I gambled and planted too early, that's my fault. I'll learn from the experience and try again.

I started hardening off my tomato starts today, too. Does anyone else think that sounds dirty, or is it just me? Huh. Anyway, I took them out for an hour this morning, to begin to get them acclimated to sunlight and the outdoors. I'm going to take two weeks to harden them off and get them used to the outdoors, and then I will plant them. Not sure yet how many tomatoes I will plant, but I have nine different varieties started. If I plant one of each variety, that will be nine plants in addition to the two I have out there. I'm going to have a lot of canning to do!