Maybe I should have started a water garden

[PHOTO of my soda bottle cloches just as soon as it stops raining]

I was up at 5:30 this morning at the soft and delicate shrieks of my little Buttercup. The sky was starting to get light but since then it seems to have grown progressively darker. This makes day 19 or so of rain.

I'm starting to get nervous about the seeds I planted last week. I realized this morning that I forgot to put the innoculant on my beans. Since the weather forecast calls for rain in varying degrees until next weekend, mold is a serious concern.

Cutworms and slugs have also been a problem for me. With all the rain, the slugs are playing merry havoc with my lettuce. Normally, I'd have set out little cups of cheap beer, but with all the downpours, I don't think it would be very effective at this time.

I wasn't expecting to have problems this year with cutworms. Since the beds are new this year, I was sure they couldn't have established themselves. I've lost a tomato and half of the broccoli to the little blighters. I've made some cloches out of clear soda bottles and that's helped keep the remaining tomatoes (and the one melon and a few of the cabbages) safe so far but with all the rain, I don't get out there enough to check on them every day.

"A garden is never so good as it will be next year." - Thomas Cooper

Perhaps it's the weather that has me thinking about next year. With all the wet, the best I can do is think about future gardens. My five year plan has us removing trees from the south side of the house so that I can move the veggie garden to a sunnier spot and add a greenhouse or coldframe. Next year though, I'm considering limiting my selection of vegetables that I grow and supplementing with stuff from the farmer's market. I enjoy celery root and fennel and such, but they are kind of a pain to grow and I don't use them like I would peas or tomatoes or even pumpkin.

Of course, it's easy to say this now when everything is green and growing. It's much harder to muster restraint in February.