Paula,

I usually receive my Totally Tomatoes orders about 10-14 days after ordering....it can vary if there's a holiday. or if there's very severe cold weather there in Wisconsin.

Baker Creek is among the fastest at shipping their orders, along with Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Willhites, but Totally Tomatoes is almost as fast. I wouldn't be concerned at this point since you ordered on a holiday and then there was a weekend followed by a week of brutal winter weather that makes our weather this last week look like kid's play. I bet your seeds will arrive this week or next.

Everyone was slow last year because a whole lot of people decided to grow vegetable gardens for the first time, and most seed companies had increases in business of 20-40% over the year before, and some had larger increases than that. Many of them ran out of seed and had to order more from their wholesale suppliers, if the suppliers also weren't sold out. That's why everything was late last year. Hopefully with last year's issues in mind, the seed companies ordered more seed for this year, have increased staffing and are ready for a huge wave of orders.

After DH removes the sods and disks up the roots, do the soil jar test to determine your soil's composition in terms of how much of it is clay/sand/silt. That will help you know if it needs something added to it to improve its tilth. I don't add peat because peat is "dead" and all it does is improve drainage. I add compost because it is biologically alive. You can add manure and I prefer that manure be composted before it is tilled into the soil because composting at the right temperatures will kill bacteria (like E. coli) that's in the manure which is very important. Composting manure also should kill weed seeds which means less weeds to worry about during the growing season.

If you have nice fluffy soil, I'd cover it with something...and it could be something like a layer of straw or chopped-up leaves just to keep wind erosion from occuring and to prevent weeds from popping up.

If there's any doubt in your mind about the fertility of the land DH is breaking up for the garden expansion, I'd have a soil test done before adding anything.

You can almost never go wrong with adding any sort of organic matter like compost, manure, chopped-up or shredded leaves, grass clippings, etc. to the soil. In our climate it is hard to have too much organic matter because the summer heat causes all organic matter to break down pretty quickly. A common gardener's catch phrase that sums up that process is this: "Heat eats compost."

It sounds like y'all are off to a good start. If you want to plant cool-season crops in this area, keep an eye on your soil temps. You can help the soil warm up more quickly by covering it with a large sheet of plastic and letting the sun heat up the soil beneath the plastic. Still, even once your soil is at the right temperature at planting depth, you need to be sure the air temps are right for planting too.

For many of us, onion-planting time is only about 5 weeks away, and I'm ready!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Do A Jar Soil Test

I ordered online (November 23) right after Dawn said they had updated their website - I got my order in about 7 days - very quick service for TT, because they are usually soooooo slow to ship orders - I think the key is ordering early before everyone gets their catalogs. Last year I didn't order till about end of January and had to wait almost 5 weeks to finally get my order.

Thanks guys, I won't worry so much now...but mercy, 5 WEEKS? Yikes! Hope mine doesn't take that long!

About the recommendation for compost, we have a pile of grassclippings that have been setting all winter. Would it be wise to get some manure now and till it into the clippings to add? I know it's going to need SOME nurishment...it's in the flat part that we call "the bottom" because it's the lowest place between our house (west end of 5 acres) and the In-laws (east end), but it's still on our side of the property line. Drainage is still pretty good because we have so much sand except in torrential downpours, but then anything floods!

Thanks for that link on the jar test for the soil!!! That's so cool! I already had planned to test the ph, etc. but now I'll add this test too! In fact, think I'll be checking several places around here!

Paula

Paula,

I'm thinking the weather has a whole lot to do with it. They've had lots of extreme cold and snow up there, and I'm betting they've been short-handed because people can't drive to work.

Do you mean fresh manure that isn't composted yet? I don't know that I'd add fresh manure now because it is going to compost very slowly in this cold and likely won't be ready to add to the garden very quickly. If the manure is already partially composted, I'd say go for it. If the area won't be planted until you're planting warm-season crops, then fresh manure added now might be OK. I just know that when Fred gives me manure from his cowbarn, I get a lot of weeds from that manure if I haven't fuly composted it before adding it to the beds.

The jar test is cool! I used it to learn about the soil in various parts of our property when we first bought this place. It was a very quick way to see which areas had the best and worst soils. In almost every instance, we had much more clay than I expected, but I did learn that one area had a sandier clay and that's where we're putting the new Three Sisters bed for 2010. I was amazed how much our soil varied in different places.

Dawn

Those poor people up North! But heck, they're much more prepared for all that snow than we are! I just hope that all this was the worst of it for our winter across the whole nation! All the fruit that normally comes from Florida will be outrageously priced this year due to their freezes! Of course, we've still got 2 more months of cold weather and Oklahoma is notorius for March snow. =(

The manure we get is from a friend that raises Palimino horses. She's really careful what she fees them and we've only occassionaly had wheat spring up. But thanks for the advice because I'm just going to put it over with top layer of the grass clipping and compost it that way. The area will most likely be for warm-season crops...but I'd hoped to try some of the onions there too. We'll see just how the weather swings! 5 weeks you say until onion planting time??? Can't wait to get my hands in the dirt!

Paula

Paula,

my dirt has to thaw out before i can get my hands in it. It's been a long time since the ponds have froze over, i chopped threw some yesterday and it was close to 3" thick.

busy1,

Our ponds have been the same way. We've never had ice this thick on our ponds, but ours is more in the 2 to 2.5" range. There's still quite a lot of ice on the Red River too. In a few scattered places, there's still little patches of snow from the Christmas Even snowstorm I don't think we've ever had snow last that long on the ground here.

I don't know about y'all, and this is not happening at our house, but there are oodles of brokens pipes in southern OK and north Texas, including some water mains. We went into a gas station/convenience store in Gainesville, TX, this morning and they had no water because their pipes froze during the cold spell and busted. The poor plumbers around here are putting in 12 hour (or longer) days.

I hope that the worst of our winter weather is past. We're back to normal temperatures here today....currently 58 degrees on our front porch. The ice on the ponds melted a little yesterday when we went into the upper 40s, but they still have a long way to go.

Our ground here only went down to 29 degrees for a few hours, so didn't freeze for long or very deeply. Dixondale ships my onions on 2-15-10 so my first planting date is coming soon.

Onions have arrived in some local stores now. Only twice since 1999 have I planted onions in January and had them come through the month unscathed, so I'll probably just wait for my Dixondale onions to arrive although it is tempting to buy one bundle at the store and plant early.

Dawn

Got my order today!!! I'm stoked! Got the recommended "Carrots Love Tomatoes" with it! DH has been reading to me since I got home from work. LOL

Ground is still frozen here, so we've postponed sod cutting for a couple more days. However, the post are in the ground to mark the space. I had just about convinced him to let garden spot #2 just go back to grass....then I opened the box from Totally Tomatoes....I should have waited.

Paula