I’ve been substituting my normal History Channel habit with an online BBC gardening show from GoogleVideo the last few nights.  It’s 8 episodes of "How to Be A Gardener", and although there isn’t much in it I haven’t heard before, what is really helpful is that the whole agricultural process is shown and explained in order, in a logical learning curve.

I’m finding the presentation to be very motivating.  I’m also finding that I did a very good thing last fall when I went about stealing all the leaves I could find and piling them into my beds.  This week I’ve been adding composted manure (really composted this time – got burned once when the manure wasn’t aged enough – weeds everywhere!) and hoeing the beds over, to mix the manure and leaves into the sand below.  The result looks MUCH better than last summer’s ‘dark sand’.

Which ought to make up for the fact that the weather has zoomed right past most of spring and into June-like temps.  I have six trays of seedlings which, just as I was starting to think about transplanting them, COOKED in their trays.  Well, the lettuce outright cooked.  Some of the others are all right, but clearly stressed by being in full sun.

You say, "but veggies are supposed to be in full sun…" Well, Alan Titchmarsh agrees with you, but his British idea of ‘full sun’ is our Floridian ‘mostly cloudy’ with a threat of winter.  I bet his veg garden doesn’t get higher than a 5 on a UV scale – whereas I heard 11 the other day.  I had thought this UV scale was an up-to-10 sort of thing – it is, mostly.

At any rate, last week it was still cold at night, so I had my babies out in the sun to keep their soil warm.  And I wasn’t quick enough to move them to part shade, so I lost the lettuce.  Must plant more.

Also must reorganize my supports – I want bamboo stakes to set up a new crop of climbing something, which can shade the lettuce and spinach.

Although I’m very grateful for having found "How to Be a Gardener" – I can’t help thinking that what I could really use is the Italian or Spanish version – they’re much closer to my latitude.  Or perhaps Egyptian…  (I’m at 30N.  That’s the same as CAIRO for sun incidence.  Barcelona is 41N.  Naples is 40N.  London is 51N…)