You may not want to thin your vegetables. Do it anyway.

For some reason Alaska gardeners have trouble thinning crops. Actually, most gardeners have this problem regardless of location. We put seeds in the ground and hope they will grow. When they do, pulling and discarding some of the seedlings is the last thing we feel like doing.

Ah, but you must thin your crops. If you don't sacrifice some of the young ones, you will get a harvest of lots of stunted things.

Not thinning carrots and beets is, in particular, a big sin. For beets, this is because the "seed" you planted, as I have noted before, is really a pod of seeds, and so you end up with little clumps of plants. Obviously, this is not going to turn out well for the beet lovers in your family. Similarly, carrots can only grow if they have room. If they don't have enough room, they stop growing and you end up with spaghetti-size carrots — and thin spaghetti at that.

The proper way to thin is to do it early when plants are small and can recover from any soil disturbance. Still, do it now if you haven't. Gently shake and pull single seedlings out of the ground. Then water. This time of year, carrots should have at least 1/2 inch separating them from neighbors. Beets should have at least an inch and probably more depending on variety.

I always end up doing an internet search on whether you can eat the thinning of carrots. (There are no questions about beets, which I know you can.) It seems the current advice is that you can eat them, which is good because I have been doing it all my life. Both can be blanched if you want to get rid of any bitter taste.

Head lettuces need thinning, too. I generally don't feel that way about leaf lettuces, however, especially since I now know what they charge at the supermarkets for baby greens. Still, as I go about town, I notice that an awful lot of us don't harvest lettuce from our gardens. Either we are so proud we leave it be until long after it sets flowers and goes to seed, by which time its taste is way too bitter. Or, we let the slugs eat it. That is silly.

In addition to harvesting your current crop, consider another helping of lettuces. They grow fast and there is plenty of time for at least one more salad.

Speaking of salads, your tomatoes should be in full flower and setting some fruit by now. If not, you have a problem. If you have flowers but they fall off instead of setting fruit, you have either a temperature problem (should not be below 55 at night) or a pollination problem: Nothing is pollinating your plants. In the latter instance, simply shaking them will help.

The question you might want to ask if you are developing tomatoes is, how many do you need? Consider snipping tips of plants and picking off flowers at some point. This will allow your plants to concentrate on the existing developing fruit. I am not saying this is a must-do chore, only a consideration for those with enough.

Keep hilling those potatoes. They only need a few inches of green above the fill. You can harvest "new" potatoes after flowers appear.

And, of course, it makes sense to harvest cole crops — cabbages and the like — when they reach a nice size. If you shoot for a state fair record, chances are your cabbage leaves will have passed their taste prime. Kale only gets tougher with age. And while broccoli seeds are a great stir-fry delicacy, they are not why you grow the crop.

So, most have broccoli flowering. Don't let it go to yellow flower stage; pick while in bud. Remember to cut your harvest off at the base of the floret and not at the base of whole plant. For the novice, this is because you will get more flowers to harvest even though you take the old ones off. They will be smaller, but they will taste the same, which is fresh, hopefully organic and great.

This is not so with cauliflower. Well, the taste will be fresh and great, but only one flower per cut. The flowers will not regenerate. If you want to try to get white curds before you harvest, consider pulling the flower's leaves up and around it and then holding them in place with a clothespin or metal clip. This may take a couple of weeks.

Even if you only grow for the fun of it, you really should harvest. If you don't want what you are growing, you should give excess to Bean's Cafe or a food bank or needy neighbor.

Jeff’s Alaska garden calendar

Gardens of Greater Eagle River: The Greater Eagle River Garden Club holds it first garden tour from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 22. Email chriswood_ak@yahoo.com or visit the tour's Facebook event page (facebook.com/events/1825166397498640/) for more information.

Anchorage Garden Club Annual Tour: Each year members of the community open their gardens for the people to visit on the last Sunday in July. The Anchorage Garden Club puts this self-guided event together. Find details at alaskagardenclubs.org or at local nurseries.