Springing into summer - the pause the refreshes ... not.

Note the heavily mulched paths

Temps are finally ready for summer crops of corn, melons and beans. At this pause in the season it is time to:

• get you mulch down! Soil will dry quickly now. Mulch the beds AND (uppercase, bold, italics) your paths. Your paths will be wicking water as quickly as the the bed - duh!
• before you mulch, cultivate. It knocks back weeds, loosens hardened soil crust thus allowing rain to be absorbed and not run off, and allows side dressing of fertilizer and manure teas to go right to the root balls.
  
• reseed where you had spotty germination. If you are redoing peas soak overnight in the fridge. Chard or beets, nick, soak and plant.
• thin your plants to proper spacings. You can easily transplant a bunch to a free area or to a spot with poor germination. "But it will set it back" - no. It will delay the transplant. So your beet harvest is spread out a little longer. That means beet greens and beets harvested over a longer period of time ... perfect!
• evaluate your expected harvested. I was way to easy on carrots - time for a whole new row! And the wife wants dakon radishes. 60 days to harvest - not a problem.

In looking back, I wasted a lot of time during rainy weather. True, you can't till or dig. but I could have finished mulching the paths, starting summer seedlings (instead of direct seeding), pulled more weeds (which come out easier in wet soil). Things that are no stealing time from fair weather chores. I'm filing it away for future use - rainy weather => get busy.