Repeat of weather from yesterday and another decision made

 Gorgeous sunny weather all this week and by weekend it is predicted to rain. If it keeps up this trend but shifting to rain in the week and clear on the weekend it will be great weather for gardeners. 

I decided to cut the sunflower head off and get what seeds I could from it. Sunflower oddly is not one of my top favorite flowers. At least the plain yellow ones, I like more colors in flowers. So I cut it off and because there was the second flower I left the rest of the stalk.

Pictures from the evening check. That divot was not there in the morning so everybody into the bed! Is this like they say of putting your vegetables to bed?

 

 

I left some of the sunflower leaves in the bed to see if they got munched. They did, but were more dried than anything else which is not a tasty snack for slugs and pillbugs. I took the lettuce seed trays out of the bed before I watered this morning. Oh and I used my pruner blade last night to poke some holes in the bottom of the trays for drainage.  Hoping it works well enough that one deeper soil tray is not draining at all. Still soggy as when I first watered it.

 

The jade bush seems to have recovered itself. Interesting. Wondering if it is a cycle after flowering falling over because I don't remember seeing that last year but I don't think I was paying attention as much to it because I didn't have the raised bed there. I also decided to use one of the cups to plant the thyme sprig. That soil is not getting any sun at all so like the in ground bed it is not drying at all. This is good for the cutting but not so much for anything I want to grow along the wall.

 

Can't see it but those seeds have some snail trails on them, I had left it over on the compost bucket to dry but you need sun to dry so I moved it over to the bucket by the raised bed. I then decided... to just pull the stalk. It isn't worth keeping and the sooner I can make more room the better. 

 

The roots were not very extensive or robust but it was enough to get it to flower. I chopped it and the dried cucumber vine and the wilted lemon branches and packed them into the compost bucket. Stirred up the soil in the bed and paused for my next decision for planting.

It's hard to make cat proofing work and still have plants in there at the moment. It just now occurred to me I can cut a piece of the chicken wire and lay it on top of both beds without being on the soil. Brilliant. But that will need some thought and some serious cutting with gloves and long pants. Will take some measurements tonight. The other problem is keeping it in place on the raised bed. I suppose I can attach it with the green wire to the trellis and make sure it's flat rather than curved. It'll be more difficult on the west bed with the potato coming up and plants already in there. Some coverage is better than none.

That south bed... shaded with only onions in there.... just don't know what to do with it. Will have to ask the garden group and see what ideas they have.