Clearing Out and Planting Up

Yesterday I showed you the bed I had my lettuce in. If you were looking, you would have noticed that I also had a lot of dill in the bed. I never plant dill anymore. It volunteers everywhere and is quite a weed. I didn't weed it out of the bed as I wanted to pick and dehydrate it. As I was picking I noticed one black swallowtail caterpillar munching on the dill. They are really common here and I often have to move them to another plant when I need to clear a bed. This one though was on some dill in the path, so I just let it be. It won't be long before this bed is all planted up with melons but for now it gets to wait. We have a two day cold spell and I'll wait to start melons once it is over.

I did want to plant up one bed though, the old kale bed. But first I had to harvest the last of the kale blossoms and rip the old plants out.

Between the plants I had some cilantro growing. I debated with myself over whether to pull it or try to plant around it. Since I was planting parsnips in that location I decided I'd better just pull it to eat small. I really wanted to loosen the soil up for the long rooted parsnips. I've never grown parsnips before and don't know if I've given them enough time, but I'd love to have more things for winter storage or maybe early spring picking. I didn't have any beds available for them earlier.

In the middle of the bed I planted parsnips. On one side I planted a mix of mizuna, salad turnips (will they grow in the summer?) and beets. The other side I'm leaving empty for a succession crop. I put a doubled over old row cover on top of the soil to help keep it moist and to keep the soil in place the next couple of days. We have wet weather predicted, though I don't think any really heavy rains are in the forecast. From what I hear parsnips take a long time to come up so I'll probably leave the cover on until they do. The cover helps keep the soil moist and makes watering easier.

While I was out seeding I seeded some Red Sails lettuce in the lettuce bed and some fennel next to the older fennel. I've never grown fennel before either. The earlier planted fennel are doing very well, but again I don't know how well it will do in the summer, but it never hurts to try.

And last but not least of the chores was to put up a cover for the cucumber and zucchini. It won't stay on all season. But the cucumber side will stay on until they start to run well and need their trellis. I do it to keep the number of cucumber beetles down. The zucchini side will stay on until the borers are gone. In my eternal quest to have zucchini survive the borers I've tried covering them in the past unsuccessfully. They always seem to find a way in. But maybe, just maybe this year my zucchinis won't die so quickly. Maybe. Or maybe the zucchini will outgrow the cover long before the borers are gone, and then I'll have to pull it off. I've never had a year that I've had way too much zucchini. I know I'm supposed to, but it just never happens. My townhouse mates get some every year, but no one else does. I keep crossing my fingers for that zucchini glut. Not because I love it so much, but I hear about it all the time and somehow I think I'm missing something. Probably not. My yearly chard glut just makes me work to get rid of it all.