23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I'm glad to hear you elected to transplant them. Millions of seedlings get transplanted annually and it is really quite easy to do. More importantly, the plants actually benefit from the transplanting process in several ways.

Good luck with your plants.

Dave

>NilaJones, thanks for your input for our specific area. Do you really think it's ok to put seedlings outside this early? Last year, I sowed seeds direct into the ground outdoors around Mid-May, and the poor things had to suffer through 2 hail storms and some cold spells. Portland has some weird weather.

You're very welcome :).

Outside, yes. And it's especially important if you don't have adequate artificial light for them indoors.

In the ground is different story. If we get a cold snap, you can bring seedling trays of tropical plants like eggplant and tomatoes indoors for a night.

Other babies like kale, lettuce, peas, etc. are happiest with cool weather anyway, so you can go ahead and plant them in the ground if the snails won't eat them.. They can stay out even when it's below freezing, this time of year. And all winter, most years.

Hail is not a problem unless your seedlings are so tiny that a hailstone hits one and kills it. When we get hail, air and ground temperatures are still pretty warm. You notice the hail melts in 5 minutes :).

I planted out my pole beans a week ago. I worried about them a little last night, with the wind and heavy rain, but they looked so happy this morning! They like this kind of weather :). Their root systems are not big enough for hot sun yet. Cool and moist is just what they want.

In colder climates, you can cure sweet potatoes near a running furnace, or in a box with an incandescent light bulb for heat.

best source for slips

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/

Here is a link that might be useful: slips and info

espoma makes good products plantone and gardentone are good ,but wood ash is good i have massive pile from the winter .they also have biotone which great stuff.

There is a link to organic gardening at the top of the main vegetable gardening forum page. If you're just starting out, I suggest you buy one of the complete organic fertilizers (like the espona products, Dr. Earth, etc.) The main way to do organic gardening is to build up your soil over several years by adding compost, composted manure and the various other things people mentioned like bone meal, kelp, rock dust. Many of these things take a season or more to break down to a form your plants can use.

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Gardening Forum

Silver veined leaves will be Black Beauty. Ronde de Nice will be slower to blossom (longest DTM of varieties in question)

I read that transplants have a better chance of withstanding SVB. I plan to start my seeds in pots this year and replant them into the garden when they are big enough. I lost my squash last year to those nasty bugs..

Thank you. I managed to find some rather ''wordy" responses to the coir debate but really wanted to know what the actual results were, you know? I will keep all this in mind as I go along. One of those large bricks sure goes a LONG way. It's too bad it isn't definite that it would be helpful. I like it for seed starting but am not sure about in the actual beds. I do make compost but it doesn't ever seem to be enough.

Yes, it can be a useful amendment, when used conservatively. I think that's what everyone is sort of saying. It does not add any nutrient benefit, but can add to the structure/texture component of a garden soil.

The mix the OP is talking about is Mel's mix - the square foot gardening guy.

Good point that I missed as the OP didn't mention Mel's Mix or Sq. Foot Gardening. But if that is the case then the Sq. Foot Gardening forum could be of the most help.

It is my understanding that Mel's Mix calls for only finished compost so that one doesn't run into the nutrient binding problems. But since it is such a specialized approach to garden then that forum would know best.

Dave

"Should I just mix in topsoil and then leaf mulch on top? Should I do the mulch after my seedlings come up? "

You hit the nail on the head, right on! I would mix in some topsoil and mulch with leaves.. As far as fertilizer.. Compost/woodash is all I use.. Your going to have people tell you that you need a soil test, you're goon toruin your soil with woodash,etc.. I'm laughing because I been using it for a while.. Mans been using it ever since we made fire... If you are looking to purchase fertilizer - espoma biotone is my favorite, all espoma products are really good.. Fish emulsion,blood/bone meal, feather meal,alfalfa meal, and kelp meal is good... But becarful with the animal products(fish,blood,bone), the damn animals dug up my garden the first year i made that mistake! You could buy all those fertilizers and have great benefits, but they are expensive! A good compost should have everything a plant needs.. A prime example of this is Charles Wilber, man who grow world record tomatoes, the only thing he uses is his homade compost...

Joe

I live in the NoVA area so not too far from where you are. They are definitely going to eat your peas.
How about putting some pots or even small beds of peas very close to your house and using some form of deterent spray on the edges of the property.

I love snow peas but I don't have dear-I have some form of small pest (can't tell if its the lizards or the birds) that eat my softer vegetables.

Sjkly it is probably slugs and rabbits. The slugs are huge and I used to live in a suburban NoVa neighborhood and there were plenty of rabbits. Lizards won't eat your veggies.

This is the way I do all my beds:

-mow the grass as low to the soil as possible

-smother the grass with leaves,newspaper,cardboard whatever is adequate to smother and kill the underlying grass

- cover the newspaper/leaves/cardboard with compost/topsoil.. Basically making a raised bed

- mulch heavily with a couple inches of leaves,etc

-plant!

That simple.. You could be planting in a couple of days.. The only expense is the compost/topsoil you would fill the beds with.. But if you have a compost pile, everything is free.. Also lookout for your city giving away free compost.. That were I got mine from.. I would of preferred my own compost, but inhad such a large area, the compos pile had to be is big as my yard! I did this with over 1,260 square feet of beds.. Vegetables,strawberries,blueberries, flowers... It works like a charm!

Best of luck,
Joe

Joe, as you have made it clear in other threads that you never disturb the ground in any way with any kind of tool, could you give a hint as to how to plant! into sod? Because it sounds like your advice here is to cover sod with cardboard and etc and then before anything has decomposed begin planting.

Also, perhaps you missed that this OP mentions that his is a second-year garden so presumably it is not presently established grass sod. Also it is unclear how cardboard will on a short time-scale amend the soil beneath. Within days or weeks we expect nutrients from compost etc to leach through the cardboard and have an effect on the ground beneath it?

Ohio is not northern VA. There is a climate difference at least. In the latter place it's past time to plant spring crops, so the OP needs to amend the ground ASAP if he wants to have a chance to grow peas and lettuce and other cool-weather crops. Covering with cardboard won't do that, nor will it warm the soil. If he has not added lime in the past then the ground is surely acidic, and is the likely cause of last year's poor performance. The most effective tack to plant now is to make the rows or planting holes directly into the clay, incorporate goodly amounts of wood ash and compost, and plant!

THatstat, you might want to go read about Square Foot Gardening. Given what you're trying to accomplish in the given space you'll need some of those techniques.

Here is a link that might be useful: Square Foot Gardening

That's going to a full/crowded bed.

You don't have to worry about interplanting because once those plants get a couple months old you're going to have a "green mess" (not necessarily a bad thing) between the cherry tomato and the squash/zukes.

If it wasn't so late in the season for FL, I would say you could squeeze a few radishes in the "dead space" that you could harvest in 30 days, but it's a bit too late in the season for radishes that would taste good. You can probably do that next year, though...weather permitting.

That will depend on the variety. Reba Acorn - I'd put 3 plants. Butterbush, 4 plants but you may have to pull 1. It all depends on how they grow and that's where are the other variables come into it. They don't grow the same in every garden.

Using container mix to fill a raised bed would get very expensive and is not recommended for that reason. There are hundreds of discussions here on what to fill raised beds with that the search will pull up.

Dave

I grew bush zucchini last year, two hills per 4 foot width. I could have easily fit six plants into a 4x8 space. That was Black Beauty. They'll hang off the edge by the edge of the season, but most of the time they stay in the edges.

I've seen a Youtube video that showed spaghetti squash weaved up a trellis. The squash themselves were hanging on just fine - the stems are pretty tough, unlike melons, which have to be carefully supported.

::laughing at carnivorous horse::

I do wash mine with a green scrubbie ,to get the dirt out.

LOL you should never ever leave a beer unattended around him. I had to plant an extra row this year, my stepdaughter found out I grow them. She has a black thumb. dug a couple up and there was about 1 in 5 that looked like it was thinking about geminating. so I'll do it again. I think maybe it was too wet. Anyway, round two. Happy gardening today Va peeps!

Enter Compost Tea in the search box at the top of this page. Make sure it is searching GardenWeb.... lots of articles.

thanks..but what abt the white patch doesn't anyone know what to do for that...even the smallest cucumbers getting it and also turning yellow when small...

Holy cow! That wood piece looks like Jesus! You better not mulch with that! That'll be one hell of an expensive piece of mulch! Save it, you'll be a millionare! Anyone else see it?

This is terrible, but I see the profile of a comic strip girl of 60 years ago...and I can't remember her name.

Some sort of beetle. A sense of the scale of the thing would help narrow it down a bit more.

Grubs are Id by their raster (butt) patterns. See link below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: UMass Ext - How to Id grubs

Easter dinner featured wonderful fresh asparagus at my friends home. After dinner, we took a nice walk to check out the asparagus bed. It was lined with rock salt to keep the bermuda grass at bay. ANYTHING that can stop bermuda is fantastic, and salt is so simple a solution.

for now a good layer of mulch is doing the job as well as keep moisture in and cut down on watering, mulch for us controls all our weeds so i'd have to say mulch, not so sure about adding in salt?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens bale garden