The cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, choy sum (oh my gods all the choy sum), rocket, sorrel, and Red Russian kale are in the ground. I’ve been wanting to plant for a week, but first there was rain and then there was an inadvertent two-hour nap and then there was a girls’ night out. But last night, I got my sweatpants and gloves on and headed out.

The vegetable garden is where I dug down to make paths and mounded the beds up. This year’s brassicas bed (sharing with greens and peas) has been getting mounded higher and higher because of the extra dirt I’m moving as I lay the brick path, so I had to dig and rake and smooth it out a bit. Also remove some parsnips from last year that I didn’t bother to harvest because they were so small but seem determined to sprout seed this year. And I’m not letting them. My entire raised bed is full of parsnip seedlings. I’m pretty sure they’re why my carrots and beets aren’t growing; those rows are nothing but parsnips.

I’m pretty pleased with the Jiffy pots and tray. The roots did, in fact, grow through the pot, as they haven’t in past years; but I broke them into pieces anyway, just to be sure. That bed is now full: yesterday’s plantings, plus the peas and a couple of lonely spinach plants. I’m not going to bother trying to replant the spinach that failed to come up because it’s only lasted one or two pickings in the past anyway. I’ll get my spinach from the farmer’s market.

That leaves, I think, two and a half beds in the herb garden free. The garlic, broad beans, onions from last year, and perennial herbs are already in; I have one empty one currently covered by compost, half the turnip bed (which isn’t growing well anyhow, since I didn’t remember to water it early), and one small bed by the fence. Also some space by the perennial herbs, but I already know that’s where the rosemary and dill and cilantro and parsley and basil will go. I’m planning on replanting carrots and beets, in this parsnip-free zone. What else will go in here? Maybe green beans, or dry beans. I’m starting to feel like I know enough about what needs to get planted when that I don’t have to write everything down and plan it out ahead of time, which is a pretty neat feeling. It probably means I’ll end up forgetting to plant something I really really wanted, but them’s the breaks.