Gardening footprints

Unfortunately, i'm not being poetic.  My garden is beginning to look like i am growing footprints instead of plants.
I could tolerate the cat footprints and when hubby tripped into my onion bed while mowing.. i could understand that as a one time thing...  but now i have neighborhood kid prints in there.  The kids around here are what i call "feral children"  they are taught nothing good and so they act it. Zero respect for anything, not other people or fence boundaries...

So now i have about 10 footprints in my onion bed and a few in the potatoes, and at least one set among my broccoli.
I really hope this isn't how the summer is going to go.

I plan to be putting the electric fence up soon, the woodchucks will be appearing sooner that i expect,  i hope he kids are prepared to respect the electric fence sign.

For the most part the rest of the garden is doing well. Some of my winter squash seeds are coming up, tomatoes are looking good. Potatoes are emerging. My onions were coming up, but many have been stepped on.  T he radishes are getting multiple leaves.  The beets aren't showing up.  The weeds are going bonkers.
I'll need to lift off the whole tunnel to check on the cucumbers again.  What i had hoped were cucumbers turned out to be squash volunteers,  so those got plucked away. 
I'll be planting corn as soon as i can .

I may go to the nursery and get some onion sets and give up on the seeded onions...  there are just too many footprints in that plot.  I haven't decided yet....  If i don't get sets i might just leave that bed to its own devices until its bean planting time and i can just put string beans there. 
Either way, i need to take a trip out there to get some herb plants.  Just parsley for the most part. Maybe something else if it catches my eye and can fi in there. Another thought is some Asian greens,  i have plenty of seed for that.  I'll soon have extra seed flats too, its warm enough for the eggplant and peppers to get under the row cover with the tomatoes and squash.
In the end, though i like the onions from the garden, they are rather inexpensive at the store still, i think it won't be such a bad thing to grow something that can't be store bought instead of the onions... like Asian greens....

Either way, i think i'll start my onions in flats rather than direct sow next year.  That goes for most everything too.  I have located most of my seeded in broccoli and cabbage, kholrabi too...  but i don't like how i have to look so closely.  I prefer having seedlings to plant.  That was this year's first lesson. 
I will start tender stuff indoors and wintersow things like onions and brassicas.

I have a scuffle hoe i need to restore. Hubby found it with my red garden rake in the free pile at the "recycle plant"-- aka, the Town Dump.  Anyway, the hoe is crusty and dull. It needs work with a wire brush and i think i can use hubby's lawn mower blade sharpener  to put the edge back on the hoe.  It attaches to his cordless drill like a drill bit. Its kinda neat, it should do the trick.

Now that my oldest daughter is out of school for the summer, i have an extra set of eyes to help me watch the little one.  That is if my oldest wakes up before noon....

Just reminding myself...

I need to prioritize the Parsnip planting today.  I feel like i am so far behind. Probably because half the other blogs i read are by people who live at least one zone south of me and that puts me about a week to 10 days behind them per zone. But i can keep myself in check to some extent by reading the Johnny's Seeds blog. They are in my zone so i can pretty much follow their lead.
They had Globe Artichokes survive the winter under their row covers this year.  I think that is awesome. They are taking root divisions and planting them out right about now.  My Imperial Star Artichoke (same as theirs) seedlings withstood the hard frost of the other day and that softened the blow of losing all else. Artichokes are up at the top of my list for favorite veggies, like in the top 5...and i'm a vegeholic. But its hard to grow them up here and the grocery stores want a lot for them.... other than pickled or canned, there isn't much else to get. Pickled and canned are fine, but fresh is a goal i'd like to achieve.

The Jerusalem Artichokes are looking good. Getting taller, it looks like all 4 varieties are making a good showing. I can't wait to try the different ones side-by-side and see what characteristics they have.

Found this Video on YouTube.  I hope it links.  I need a hoe like this cause i think it will save me a lot of trouble if i can imitate this method.




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Circa 1:38 pm

I got the parsnips planted. So that is one thing accomplished today. I also put up the last 2 hoops that i still had. I need to get the rest of them this weekend and install them so i can get the broccoli and suchlike out there.

My used books are on their way,  their estimated delivery dates are both June 3...

I am reading "Root Cellaring" now, so far it is interesting.