I am sure I have mentioned this before but Mother Nature would never allow land to lie unused for long.
Minerals would leach through the soil unchecked, so it is far better to keep something growing and retain those nutrients in the upper echelons of the soil profile.
In this way plants growing will, in theory, use the food available to them and then by dying and rotting will return those used nutrients back into the soil for another generation of plants to use.
Either that, or you harvest them, compost the waste material and return that to the soil.

Of course, if an insect such as a slug should happen by, then after feeding, those nutrients will be returned much faster back into the soil. You thought slugs were all bad.
If they are on your runner beans then they are a pest. But on the roadside, out of harm's way, for example, the slug does have a part to play in keeping nutrients available to plants.

So I digress – there are advantages to sowing crops later in the season. Rather than being the first to harvest in your street, consider being one of the last.
Laugh at those with blackfly on the broad beans. By sowing later you avoid the generation emerging that infests the growing tips. No blackfly, then no need to spray.
An alternative solution is to pick out the tips as the plants mature so that again, there are no problems associated with blackfly infestation.
Customers are clamouring constantly for more information about the plants they are about to buy. Quite right too say I.

Technology is allowing us to do this in ever more detail and indeed colour. To help us do this we use a colour label that shows the plant at its best. Thus, you can see how a winter flowering plant performs in summer and vice versa.

Many of these labels however are manufactured using a wire reinforced tie. The wire is twisted in order to secure it to the plant. So if you want to leave the label on to remind you of the plant, do check that the tie is not on too tight.

If left, the plant can grow and the wire will strangle the stem. I once saw a row of conifers where these wire type ties were used to support them on canes when they were young.
The trees grew with the wire cutting into the bark as this happened. Ten years later they started to snap in winds just at the point where they had been tied. You have been warned!

Furthermore, plastic labels can degrade and fall off leaving only the inconspicuous piece of wire. Far better to keep the label in a file, and mark it on a sketch of the garden, so that you can always identify it later.
If you are writing your own labels then try ordinary pencil on plastic. There are some so-called "marker pens" that make a good clear job at first but fade long before pencil does.
Both sunlight and water seem to affect pens more than said pencil.
So there we are – words of wisdom to help you keep up to the mark with your gardening and stop you looking so pensive.