Weeding and Thinning - unintended sacrificial kills

I spent about nine good hours weeding my garden this weekend. The blessed rains that had nourished my garden had also quenched the thirst of little weeds staking territory in my plot. I arrived on Saturday morning to find a thin layer of weeds covering every inch of my garden. With cultivator in hand, I was ready for the task.

I actually don't mind weeding. Weeding is fine when you still think you are winning the battle. It is a quieting activity, but some vegetables require more attention than others. I prefer weeding around beans and okra because I am more confident that my cultivator will simply take out the weeds. Weeding around young carrots, beets and chard sprouts requires more patience and technique. Their thin roots seem almost eager to fall over with even the faintest vibration. Such nudges are hard to avoid when the weeds are less than an inch away. It is a cruel fate to kill one's plants when trying to remove the weeds, but a few extra carrots and beets were lost in the long weeding war this weekend.

I wasn't too worried about the accidental thinnings because I needed to purposefully thin through my carrot and beet rows. I had to thin the carrots back severely because the seeds were sown so heavily. Few of my carrots germinated last year, so I was more generous while sowing this spring. The pendulum had swung in the opposite direction this year. My carrots came up mere millimeters apart. Rather than pullout the root of the sacrificial thinnings, I used a scissors to cut off the tops because I did not want to destroy the root structures of the carrots and beets anointed to live. I couldn't help avoid moving the soil ever so slightly; the cardinal sin of thinning. After all of the stress, my beet and chard plants did provide 8 cups of delicious tiny salad greens. The sacrificed carrot tops simply gave me heartache.