Garden mistakes I’ve made this year

The weather here was pretty warm in April, and I wanted to get a head start on the garden.  So I went ahead and planted some zucchini, watermelon, cucumber, and cantaloupe seeds in pots.  They came up and were doing well, and the weather got cold.  So they stayed on the porch, and got a bit leggy.  But then the weather warmed, and I got the garden worked up, so I transplanted them and mulched them in good.  There were a couple of nights it was going to get into the upper 30s, and I worried, but hoped that with the mulch they would be okay.  But then I noticed half their leaves were brown.  I kicked myself, and worried, but hoped for the best.  Then, on our last frost date, we got frost.  I debated on doing something to cover them, but I’m a night owl and don’t usually get up till noon, and they were half-dead anyway.  So my seedlings died.  My onions, peas, and lettuce pulled through without issue, and the couple potatoes that had come up are recovering.  It did take a long time for my beans and corn to come up, but hopefully that was just because the ground wasn’t overly warm.  The beans are finally coming up, and the corn is a bit hit or miss, but that might just be because it’s old seed.

My plan had been to transplant in the seedlings, then wait some weeks before direct planting more seeds, to spread the harvest out some.  So I left spaces for where these new plants would go.  Now a week or so before the frost, we had some old eggs that needed to be gotten rid of.  And I figured I’d bury them in the garden.  I dug a trench about where some tomatoes will go and buried most of them, but I also buried some where I was going to direct sow the melons and such.  We have about six inches of soil, then a clay layer.  I dug down into the clay layer, dumped in the eggs, broke them, dumped some compost on top, then covered them over.  And I put a marker to know where to plant.

After the frost, I needed to replant stuff, but since we don’t have the longest of growing seasons, instead of planting one hill, then waiting some weeks to plant another, I figured I’d replant over the dead seedlings and in the new spots.  So I did that, and watered everything in good.  Then a couple days later I went to the garden to see something had dug up the old eggs.  I cursed, but got more compost and filled in the holes, and replanted the seeds again, only for the next day to find they had dug everything up again.  Apparently, they left an egg or two, or hoped the eggs would refill.  I really cursed, but left the holes open.  The next day it rained for most of the day, and the day after that I had to work.  But the next day I went to the garden and nothing else seemed to have been dug up, so I filled the holes in again.  It’s been three or four days since that, and the spots where I’m going to plant the zucchini and such haven’t been dug up, and the tomato trench has had a couple, half-hearted digs.  So hopefully, that’s all done with.  Now, the issue is do I replant the seeds again.  I don’t know if whatever dug them up also snacked on the seeds, but with my luck if I replant, I’ll probably end up with three zucchinis coming up in one spot.