I planned to spend today in the garden, clearing out a new bed for the food I plan to grow for the food bank. However, to do that, I need to pull turf up and shake out the topsoil stuck in the roots, and it’s too muddy.

Instead, I’m at Java Bean Coffee House in Ballard, making plans for the garden. I am using my Maritime Northwest Garden Guide and the resource book given to COG graduates  - both resources I got from Seattle Tilth.

Early this month, I plan to plant dill, more lettuce, and snap bush beans. If I can get my hands on it, I want to plant some orache, which is apparently like a salty spinach. Yum! And I’ll find some starts of basil, since it’s too late to seed some of my own. I can’t go a summer without lots of basil, and it seems like I could get it more inexpensively if it was in my garden.

Two of the things on that list, dill and basil, discourage pests in the garden . Dill discourages cabbage looper, tomato hornworm, and imported cabbage worm. Basil discourages asparagus beetle (good for Erick and Alice, who have some gorgeous asparagus!), flies, mosquitoes, and tomato hornworm. Double whammy on the tomato hornworm, although I think we’re pretty safe from those up here in the Pacific Northwest. Tomato blight seems to be the larger problem. I remember lots of tomato hornworms in my parents’ garden in California, though!

And I’ll plant some sunflowers because they’re just so beautiful, and maybe some borage for the bees.

Later in June, I probably won’t get a chance to plant anything because I’ll be travelling. If I do a get a day, though (maybe with my family, when they’re in town!), I’ll plant some more carrots and beets in the ground, and start brussels sprouts, cabbate, turnips, endive, and chard in pots, so I can plant them when I start harvesting the things that are already there and room becomes available.