Tash attacked again. The strawberry bed is her favourite but she’s managed to make her presence felt in other spots. I don’t think the Scat works very well. Plus it’s a nasty toxic. Today I tried Plan B – stick attack. I’ve placed dry branches with lots of little branches on the bare spots in the garden. Hopefully this will deter her. I also did spray Scat on the fence. I’m pretty sure she walks along the fence and then lands in this bed. I’ve seen landing paw prints even if she hasn’t done any digging.
On the other pest fronts, the aphids and stink bugs seem to be in manageable numbers. Manual squishing is working (though it’s rather offensive).
Most of the plants are doing pretty well. I think the lettuce is finally perking up and I harvested a lot of the basil for bruschetta yesterday and you can’t even tell. 
The tomatoes are starting to come on the plants, but I think we have a way to go there. One variety is doing much better than the others, but I’ll wait to see the harvest before jumping to conclusions.
Today I planted more ginger – another row in front of the last one. At the shops yesterday I needed to buy ginger and some was sprouting so I took it as a sign. I planted a couple of small toes and one large clump. We’ll see which does better.
I also planted my “control” group of rocket. I planted it in the pea bed where it gets a lot more sun than in the ginger bed.
And I planted the last rhubarb in the ginger bed, kitty corner from the last one. We sort of gave up on the idea of putting it in a pot (mainly because we don’t have a lot of good compost at the moment and don’t want to keep waiting).
One more plant came inside (2 actually). They are the ones we call Grace’s purple plants because we got them from our old neighbour, Grace. No idea what their real name is, I’ll have to search. But I think they’ll do better inside. They don’t want much light but they like more water than they were getting under the Japanese Maple.
Update 4 May 2011: The rocket in the sunny bed struggled in the heat but has finally come on strong and we’ve harvested some with more still growing (this definitely needs mulch and a shade cloth in summer). In the shady bed it did so so and then died before we could eat more than a couple of leaves. (The 2 eggplant trials behaved similarly.)
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 