Spring Garden

[Tackleberry]

Well, it's planting time here in AZ. My wife and I planted our Spring garden this weekend. Normally we start from seeds but the results have been hit/miss, so this year we went with transplants. Here is what we planted:

- Zucchini x 6
- Summer Squash x 6
- Roma Tomato x 1
- Cherry Tomato x1
- Yellow Bell Pepper x 6
- Basil
- Chives
- Red Onions x 30
- Garlic 1 bulb that broke into 20 cloves
- Bush Pickle x 4
- Butter crunch lettuce x 6

Our Fall/Winter garden was planted with seeds and about 40% didn't germinate until about 3 weeks ago. We have carrots, turnips, green onions, peas, butter crunch lettuce and leeks coming up now from the Fall/Winter planting. We have had incredible results with okra from seeds. In fact, I pulled up the last 2 okra plants this weekend from our 2015 Spring planting. They actually died off with our first frost back in December. I will plant okra in late March after I see how our Spring planting goes.

Anyways, that's what we have going.

If anyone has advice/experience on planting from seeds I'd like to hear from you.

[protus]

Our soil is messed up. Aka over used.
We get great bean crops..good okra...but lettuce...etc fail to get going.
Put it in planter boxes. Bam...i cant keep up.
Im actually debating moving compost bins to the beds this spring...ive had one bed resting since summer. So i might use that for spring summer and the big plots for fall .

For seeds we just stick in the dirt and water..but ive again been debating starting them out of the beds and transferring .
Just to try new things. Get new experiance etc.

[wwdnet]

Solarized the garden last fall due to parasitic nematodes; not sure how well that worked out but will load up on Black Kow, some disease resistant plants, and give it one more try. If we start to see shriveling leaves, I will put in planter boxes across the whole garden, replant, and solarize again. Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, spinach, onions, eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, bush beans, and a bunch of herbs are on the agenda. It has been a discouraging couple of years but we will get it figured out because I feel the need to 'put up' some canned goods this year! I've had good luck starting from seed and transplanting, but getting a later start than I wanted to...Husband is working 13-on, 1-off which makes getting the tilling done a challenge.

[MustangGal]

The trick to getting many seeds to germinate quickly is to start them indoors with some type of heat underneath. We are planting about 100 tomato plants this year and starting/selling about 400 (or at least that is our plan).

Our set up is incandescent rope lights coiled in a large metal tub. Tomato plants germinate in just days, peppers take about a week.

Don't use this trick with cool loving plants like broccoli or cabbage. But, it works very well for plants that love it warm.

[wwdnet]

Update on the solarized garden:
I put in mostly disease/nematode-resistant tomato plants, with just 2 standard Big Boys. While the Big Boys had some leaves that yellowed, I kept plucking them off and reapplying Black Kow every week. Peppers, onions, squash, spinach, etc. all looking great and producing! As the summer progresses and the tomato plants die off, I will put down black plastic and leave it in place until it's time to plant a winter garden.