Hi Alice!

Welcome to the MAG forum and gardening. No matter what color your thumb is, your garden will get better with time as you learn more about soil, water, and what conditions different plants need to thrive. There are many ways to deal with difficult growing conditions and reading the forums and asking questions will help a great deal. You've already figured out that the tomatoes and basil you want to grow need a lot of sunlight. You should really start with a small area first because it will be a lot easier to manage. You can fit a lot of veggies in a 3x5' area- check out Square Foot Gardening- and keep the beds narrow so you can reach in. You can also sprout seeds outdoors in plastic containers, even tomatoes- check out Winter Sowing. Lettuce and snap peas grow best in the spring and should be started now. But not before you do something with your heavy soil.

The fastest way I've found to loosen and amend soil is to add bags of LeafGro compost available locally. You probably will not have enough of your homemade compost right away. I am not sure about your raised bed plan- are these to be like terraces down the hill? Amending the soil could help with drainage, but if the beds are raised, they will probably drain pretty well and can be filled with good soil from the start.

Did you actually get tomatoes to eat from your indoor plants? If your garden is not ready, you can grow the tomatoes in 5-gallon buckets with drain holes in the bottom. Basil usually bolts no matter where it's grown.

Hope these few tips are helpful to you.

Susan

Hi Susan.
thank you very much for all that. I did read that basil is famous for bolting so I didn't feel that bad. We were also able to get 5 or 6 tomatoes (they were oh so good!) in 2004 ... that's a while ago. I put a picture of the herbs and tomato plant I was growing then in the URL link. Hope you can see. I was so proud of myself.
The garden isn't going to a terrace style. Basically what I have done so far is dig 6 or 7 inches to loosen the soil and get rid of major roots and rocks forming and alley and placing the loosened dirt next to the alley forming a bed. (hope that makes sense). I am planning on doing that, creating an alternating bad/alley/bed/alley etc kind off thing going up the hill. If I calcuated right that would give me 5 raised beds. The soil seems ok. I mean, what do I know ... I think it's good because it has a lot of darkness to it and quite a bit of earthworms too. It used to be an overgrown area with small trees and a lot of vines, fungi and ferns. We cleared it up 4 or 5 years ago and never really did anything to it.
I was planning on planting the herbs in pots anyway at first and putting them in the garden area. Can I start the lettuces and peas even though the dirt is still covered with the snow/sleet we got a couple of days ago? Seems awfully cold.
Thank you so much for all your input. I will startmy basil now too then I guess. the only problem I have is that there is only one windowsill I can put seeds on to expose them to light and it's already occupied with the tomatoes. I wonder what I'm gonna do about that.
Alice

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1047198}}

Alice,

I'll second Susan's suggestions about soil ammendments. I'm in year three of raised bed gardening, and it was the best thing I've done. My soil is heavy clay, so by building and filling my raised beds with (expensive) garden soil, gardening has been fruitful and fun. I don't believe I would have gotten anywhere without the good dirt we added.

I'm no master gardener, and because we did one bed at a time, they all are different in composition, but all doing well. Essentially, you need some good dirt and a lot of organic matter. I also have had good luck with the leaf-gro.

The other trick I learned last summer was to mulch my veggie garden. I've always mulched my flowers and beds, but this was the first year with the veggies and it helped with water retention a lot. Some beds I used grass clippings, some newspapers, and some bark mulch.

I guess for me the bottom line is that if you are going to put your money into something, good soil is the best investment! You'll reap the benefits year after year.

Tara

Wonderful! thank you for the tips. When you say that you did "building and filling my raised beds with (expensive) garden soil" Does that mean that you took a layer off your yard or just added the dirt on the top? Or did you mix the original clay soil with the garden soil you bought?
So then, after you raised your beds, you were left with little alleys to walk through as to not step on your beds right? Doesn't that collect water during heavy rain and is that a problem?
I'm sorry those seem like such dumb questions but I guess I have a LOT to learn :)
Thanks again for your patience and tips!
Alice

I did forget to mention something. We have a creak that backs up to your back yard. My husband has basically (as have the neighbors) been dragging all of our autumn leaves and yard debris in piles close to the creak. This has transformed into such dark earth that I think I might be able to use that as compost for now. What do you think? No chemicals or other waste are back there and there is TONS of that stuff. It's basically a very loose, black soil. I guess I could spare some :)
Alice

Alice,

We ended up building 4 raised beds, 4x8 feet about 18-24 inches high, and filling them with soil. That's a lot of soil, even if you're trying to get some cheap stuff. We probably used about a third native soil (did I say soil? I meant clay) and supplemented the rest with bagged garden soil, compost, and peat. I love having the raised beds, for a number of reasons:

-easier on the back
-my small kids would trample all my plants
-a little chicken wire (mostly) keeps the bunnies out
-no risk of walking on the soil and packing it too densely
-did I mention the kids?

Now, I'm on a 1/4 acre suburban lot and didn't have the luxury of space to make a huge garden. If I did, the cost of building raised beds would probably be prohibitive. But for a veggie garden for us, it's worked really well. But for a larger veggie garden, I think a lot people mound the beds and create mulched pathways between them, so as to avoid the compacting.

We did a bunch of other beds (modified lasagna) through the yard for flowers, etc. They've of course been walked all over, but did okay for a while.

Hope this helps!

Tara