Please don't a be guilty of 'entrapment' however. If there are lures for butterflies in your vegetable garden, you will have to be very careful not to poison them with any contact insecticides you might use on your vegetable plants. Some people think of 'butterfly gardens' as only where the butterflies come to visit the flowers, but it's also going to be where they lay their eggs. I had a customer who wanted me to assemble all the plants needed for a butterfly garden and I got a call from her later in the season saying her plants were full of 'worms' and she wanted to know how she could kill them. After she described them to me, I informed her they were caterpillars from the butterflies and she should leave them alone. It never dawned on her that would be the natural course of events.

I've been picking away at the veggie garden over the last week or two. The direct-sown peas haven't sprouted yet - soon, I hope. I've plopped out some of my wintersown Buttercrunch, Romaine, and Red Sails lettuce, as well as some ws German chamomile. I've planted out about 250 onion plants I ordered from Dixondale Farms this year. Now I'm starting in on the potatoes - about 2 pounds planted, about 8 more to go! Have several varieties of hardneck garlic coming up from a November planting, and a big bed of shallots because we love cooking with them. As always, I've rather underestimated the amount of room things are going to need. But that's a great excuse to start making more beds! I've got 2 tiny little two-day-old Stupice tomato sprouts - still waiting on all the other varieties. Lots of ws herbs, flowers, greens, and other goodies still to go out. They're awfully small, but my first couple transplants are very happy, so I'll step up the planting-out phase soon. My resolution this year is to keep a faithful garden journal, so that next year I'll remember what sprouted when, and what I learned from my mistakes (of which there are always plenty). I'm also doing a lot of reading about what to plant to attract specific beneficial insects, and which companion plants help repel certain pests. Dh and kids think my obsessive bug research is a little odd. Oh, well... they're probably right! I wish you well in your veggie garden endeavors. I'll be thinking of you as I putter about in mine! Maybe if you put a bed of your favorite perennials (or annuals or herbs or whatever your favorite is!) in your veggie garden, you'll visit it more often and have more fun while you're there. You'll also have fewer pests, since the flowers will attract beneficial bugs to help control the bad bugs... Nightingale :o)

Wow, your garden looks good. I have Peas over a foot tall but the rest of my garden is soaked. I have water in the paths up to the tops of my raised beds. It looks like a canal. We've had 3.17" of rain in 4-5 days & it rained before that too. I wish I could save it until I need it when it's dry, like July or Aug. I've started about 10 flats of plants for my dozen beds here & I have a big garden planned at my friend's (she has a brown thumb). Linda

OK - to quote the builder's mate (I was laying a no dig garden on grass while our renovations were being done) : "You put it on THAT thick? Maybe that's why mine didn't work?" He was referring to the fact that I was putting 10 to 12 pages thickness of newspaper underneath the lucerne pads. He had put only 4 or 5 pages thickness and had the weeds grow straight through it, eeven with good overlap. Put it on thick, water it thoroughly, lay 10 to 15 cm pads of lucerne hay (tight pads straight from the bale, not loosened up) and water it all thoroughly. Add plenty of manure, compost, lime, blood and bone. The lucerne should not be visible through the manure and compost. Water again, and top up with fluffed up wheaten or oaten straw, or used stable straw if you can get it. All the watering is so that the lucerne bales start to rot immediately. They make a wonderful medium for the roots of plants to grow into, and the worms start working the lucerne, manure, and newspaper into the soil underneath. There is no digging at all with this method, except for maybe emptying the wheelbarrow of manure and compost. Give the whole thing a few weeks so the layers start to meld together, then place 1/2 bucket of good quality soil per plant ofr tomatoes, zucchinis, cabbages, etc, or a row about 10cm wide, and 15 cm deep to plant seeds into. Spuds grow exceptionally well in a no dig garden - you put them at the bottom on the newspaper, and skip the lucerne layer. Good if you have a reasonable depth of soil underneath for the spud roots to work for you, BUT it's hard to completely get rid of the spuds. Edna Walling popularised the method in Australia and her book is titled simply "No Dig Gardening".