Ditto to the above. There are several strategies that can be employed. Intercropping is one, where you have, for instance a leaf crop, a fruiting crop, and a root crop all growing together - for our purposes, lets say arugula, snap peas, and turnips for the early season. Of these, the arugula will be ready for harvest first, then the turnips, then the peas. You could time your planting so that everything is ready at the same time, making the entire bed ready for a new crop. Or, you could plant everything at the same time, meaning you would have a succession of harvests, perhaps overlapping slightly, of 3 different crops. Or, you could stagger your planting dates, so that you get a longer harvest, but less yield on a weekly basis. Each strategy has advantages, depending on your long term plans. For me, staggered plantings of the arugula and turnips make sense, because i want to eat them in a few meals every week, but because the peas will provide a continuous harvest over a longer period - because we're harvesting the fruit, and not the whole plant - I would put in that row all at the same time, and in another bed put in a second row a few weeks later, or establish a succession by planting a variety with a different maturation period. The arugula MAY provide multiple harvests, depending on your method, and will be available first. It is also least tolerant of heat, so will benefit from being shaded by the peas as the season progresses. Because it will see the most attention, I would plant it at the outside of my bed, where it is easiest to reach. The turnips, being root crops, will cause some disturbance when they are harvested, so I will make sure that they are not too closely spaced, to the other turnips, but also to the other crops in the bed. The peas will be comparatively tall when they are ready to harvest, so the shade that they produce will need to be accounted for in the layout of the bed - not only in terms of North-South-East-West, but if the row is in the middle, with other crops on either side, or on one edge, where the effect of shading is reduced. Assuming 70 days for the peas to mature, and perhaps 2 weeks of harvest, it's possible that you could have the entire bed emptied and ready to plant on 3 months, but that would mean a significant amount of space was being underutilized where the arugula and turnips were removed. You could choose to reseed those areas with your second crop, but it would be more time-efficient to transplant. In the interest of rotation, and taking into account the season, you might put in cucumbers, to climb the trellis soon to be vacated by the peas, or eggplant, or squash. Broccoli would work, but it's a heavy feeder, and it's related to turnips, so less ideal. Greens could work, but you're getting into the warmest part of the season, so kale would be a better choice than spinach. And ideally you want whatever you plant to be ripe and ready in time to get a third crop into the ground - and ripe - before winter sets in, so maturity dates become even more important as you do your planning later in the season. Otherwise, you'll get to the end of the growing season, and unless you have some kind of season-extension tactics, the only thing able to grow to maturity in your garden will be 25-day radishes, and really, how many of those do you want to eat? Another consideration is how you will deal with the harvest. If you are growing only to have fresh vegetables for the length of the growing season, successions are the way to go. But if you want to freeze pesto or can tomato sauce or make pickles, you want a large harvest all at once so that you can efficiently process your produce. Personally, I don't want to be stuck in a hot kitchen on August, so I schedule some of my plantings so that the canning can take place, as much as possible, in the cooler months, and the foods that can be enjoyed raw are coming ripe in summer. That means not only making choices about crops, but about varieties - slicing tomatoes to ripen early, but plum tomatoes in September, or Hakuri turnips to eat in summer, and purple-tops, which taste better cooked, for fall. As you can see, the process of multiple cropping is wonderfully complex. This is just one example, with only a few crops, and doesn't fully incorporate the varying needs of water, nutrients, and sunlight that a detailed plan should include. Short maturity crops like radishes and salad greens can often simply be tucked in wherever space and time allow without much planning, and having seedlings always on hand to transplant will provide you with a denser harvest schedule, but a successful plan for multiple harvests is a multi-dimensional puzzle, involving space, time, species, cultural requirements, season, and use. Personally, I enjoy the complexity, it's like a game of chess, or planning a perfect heist, but for some people it can seem daunting. It is probably best, in the beginning, to follow one simple rule - plant something every week, and when you harvest one crop, renew the soil (I add lots of compost, and nothing more) and plant again. Lastly (for now), although you are growing in the same space, it is never the same soil. It is important to renew the soil regularly, to replace all of the nutrients that multiple cropping removes. Lots of compost, and fertilizer when needed, will go a long way towards providing a good succession.

I would rinse them off and pot them. Keep the soil on the dry side. Don't worry too much about the leaves, they will grow back. I use clear Dixie cups for smaller cuttings so that I can see the roots and how damp the soil is. Yours should be ok. Not sure where you are in zone 8, but my last frost day was yesterday. Not quite time to put them out though. Georgia

Occasionally I'll find a plant that was last repotted 3 years ago. This always poses a dilemma for me. If I don't care enough about the plant to repot it, I should give it away, but I won't give anyone a plant that's limited by root congestion, so I have to repot it before I give it to someone. Once I repot it, I often figure, "Why not keep it, now that it's repotted?" If you've had a plant in the same soil for years, the plant is being limited by root congestion. If it isn't limited by root congestion, the plant is struggling to grow a root system with enough mass to support the plant. Neither are good scenarios. Regardless of their appearance, plants become decreasingly happy as root congestion and soil collapse progress, and believing a plant in the same pot/soil for many years is healthy isn't realistic. How healthy a plant is really isn't as subjective as it seems. Vitality isn't measured by how acceptable a plant looks to us (though that's a perfectly acceptable yardstick by which to determine whether or not we wish to change the plant's course); the real measure of a plant's state of vitality lies in how much of it's genetic potential the plant is able to realize. Plants with severe root congestion and collapsed soils are only able to realize a small fraction of their potential. That may be enough to satisfy grower A, but might not satisfy grower B at all. The important consideration doesn't center on judging someone according to whether or not they keep a plant in the same pot/soil for long intervals; rather, it's as simple as understanding that root congestion and soil collapse, together or singularly, do significantly impact a plant's vitality and potential, and are always made manifest in limitations. When we pot up or repot a plant suffering from root congestion, we almost always notice what we take to be a 'growth spurt', which isn't really a growth spurt at all. What we're seeing is the plant being allowed to grow some measure closer to it's potential. IOW, it could have been growing that way all along, if not for the root congestion. The improvement we see after repotting up or repotting just shows us how much potential we've been missing. Potting up offers significantly less benefit because it doesn't affect root congestion in the inner root mass. Even if you prune some roots from the perimeter of the root mass, the core congestion remains. Repotting and root pruning, OTOH, eliminates all limitations associated with root congestion and allows a complete change out of the old, weary soil. Al

The only thing I am afraid of on the general forums is when people pop in and say something even I know is totally not true, and they usually pronounce it dogmatically, as if it is gospel. Sirens go off in my head and I think, "Oh MY. How many people are going to glom onto this bit of gospel and run with it?" The phrase "First, do no harm" always comes to mind. That, and what Amy said. And what Dawn said. I bet you can predict what's coming, Bruce! Totally believe that. And what Jen said. Brr today. Since it will be cool for the next few days, I'm in no hurry to run and get raised bed soil. But am looking forward to the present forecast of really warmer temperature in 4-5 days. I shall be prepared. HJ, I had that happen, only cardinals up in Minneapolis (I'd like to think ONE cardinal, and it very likely WAS the same one as they were extremely territorial up there.) The first time I was standing outside after it had snowed, marveling at the beauty, and thinking of Russ while shoveling the driveway. Glanced up when I got out there, and there was a cardinal,stark red against a white background, on the light pole across the street, directly opposite me on our narrow street. My first thought was how beautiful the scene was. As my mind was occupied with thinking of Russ, how goofy he was and how I wished I could be visiting with him, I'd glance up. There he sat, just watching me. This continued until I was through, and then he softly flew away. Then I actually keyed into him when I'd be out in the winter, or spring or summer that year, and he often would be sitting fairly nearby, oh, say 15-20 feet, and just watching me. And so I came to associate him with Russ, after that first time. I never though it WAS Russ, but I didn't discount the possibility that it might be a messenger carrying messages about Russ or from Russ. Or maybe he just found me interesting. haha As we know, birds are no different than humans. Each one an individual, with THEIR own little quirks. Now down here, the cardinals don't appear to be quite as territorial, and further, none of them has shown the slightest interest in me, nor have any of the other birds. :) The ticks and chiggers, on the other hand, they think I'm magic. I suspect you had a riveting movie to watch last night, Dawn. That was OUR deal at sleepovers. Big batch of popcorn snuggled up together on top of the quilt, not under, with our OJ, watching one of the marvelous movies. Beautiful memories. It is proving to be an extra special day here today, full of thankfulness and love for gardening, nature, and people, and the source for it all. The only gardening I'll do today is potting up, no small thing in itself. Hope you all are doing well!