slow sorting out spring

Trying to work out what to plant right now.

I've already done most of my planting, but there's some seeds that failed and others that could do with succession sowing. But this always brings up the question of how many and what.

Tomatoes? More tomatoes? How many more tomatoes? Corn? Glass Gem for the pretty (and popcorn and grinding), or sweet corn for the eating? Pumpkins? I really do need to work out my pumpkins: I want some for eating and some for storing, and zucchinis if I can actually grow them. It's touch and go some years. I'd love capsicums and cucumbers because we would eat them, and eggplant because I love cooking with eggplant. Melons? That would be the ideal, but I never do well with melons. It might just be that I've never grown them in rich enough soil and well-watered conditions. IDK.

Those are the annuals, the ones that get sown and planted out every year. I should probably plant more lettuce for when the current crop of lettuces & silverbeets & spinaches die off - I could stick them in the somewhat shady HEXABED, maybe? Except one of the reasons I was growing flowers and whatnot in the HEXABED is because of the high lead levels...

I also have to think of what to say about Use And Value Diversity, which is October's Permie Principle. Apart from sowing heirloom seeds, or having early-, mid-, and late- varieties where possible, or buying heritage breeds to mix with layer breeds so they'll hopefully last longer than a few years' cycle of chooks. IDK.

I stuck the chooks back on the CREPE-APRICOT bed after protecting the bush beans that were growing there, because I needed them to dig up and deal with the remainder of the brassicas. But after this, they're going to be stuck with the front yards, and that's about it. I'm still trying to grow some perennials along the edges of CHOOKYARD 2, because everything else gets scratched up something awful.

In the NORTH PICKET FENCE, a couple of 'Very Large' pumpkins have started growing from the seeds I dumped there. The sunflowers I planted out seem to be doing well, and the Elder tree is in bloom. Not sure if any of the Avos have pollinated, nor the mangoes. But the Asian basils and the salvias are coming back with a vengeance, and the lavenders are starting to reshoot after I hacked them apart in midwinter.

And the roses and the wildflower lawn are going off!