Weekend gardening outlook: nice Saturday, soggy Sunday

SEATTLE - We're drying out today and a really nice day is in store for tomorrow. Early birds watch out for some cold temps on Saturday, where skies clear out all our Friday warmth escapes out into space and temps could drop into the upper 30s. Not a huge frost threat except near Port Townsend, Hood Canal and around the South Sound. Could be foggy in many spots too to start out the day, but sun should win out the day. Hard to evaporate morning fog with such a low sun angle this time of year though. Sunday's forecast models were advertising morning rain and evening rain, but each successive run the gap between the two seems to get smaller and smaller-- so not a huge window of dry weather for the second half of the weekend. 

We've had a pretty wet and blustery week-- so there's likely lots of clean up to do with most of the leaves off the trees. As a lazy gardener, I'm happy to sweep them off the sidewalk and let them decompose to feed the lawn-- but I know that for many folks that's just not how they want their yard to look. While we will be dry for half the weekend, the soil is still really wet. I'd avoid planting bulbs or digging around in your garden beds when the soil is this wet. It compresses the soil and among other things ends up squeezing out the air pockets. Baby plant roots and earthworms don't care for that at all so keep them happy and wait for a longer stretch of dry weather. The rule of thumb is that if you can't make the soil into a mudball in your hand, it's too wet. 

Other garden projects like plotting out next season's garden beds or building a cloche cover for the colder winter temperatures that are not too far off would probably be better uses of your time. -Tim Joyce