Rain!!

We had some rain last night and this morning! Not a whole lot but enough to dampen the topsoil. Maybe bring down the fire danger a little.

Temp has cooled down again for a few days. Not cold enough to do damage to warm weather crops but cool enough for more lettuce to germinate. Lettuce rows are beginning to look decent. Spinach isn't quite as finicky and lots of spinach is growing now. (Okay, lots by the standard of what I've had before. Not lots by many standards.)

I'm letting the bolting spinach keep growing so I can save the seeds. Because of the temperature fluctuations, some of the onions are seeding now. Do the same with them. While it was easy to find red onion sets, I found it hard to find red onion seeds this year.

Since it's cloudy today, I went ahead and planted out the melon seedlings. I never labeled them, so should have an interesting mixture of melons growing all over the place.

Looks like much of the soil in the north garden is still resistant to moisture. Too much clay. Moisture has a hard time reaching below the first inch or so. Maybe I need to plant more there this year with shallow roots. May not even get a corn crop unless I get the pump going and do occasional flood irrigation there.

Was going to go exchange the pump today but decided to wait until next paycheck. Then see if I can trade up to a slightly more expensive, self-priming model. And let my knee rest today.

See a couple of the new strawberry plants are greening up!

The hanging tomato is still surviving. Not growing wildy but growing. I planted another tomato plant on the top of the same planter. Need to stake that one. Be cool if both produce. Going to make more hanging planters, since I now have an excess of tomato plants. (I did last year, too but that didn't last.)

Rest of today, I think I'll just alternate reading and housework.