Very nice! It's a great time of year, isn't it?

Looks like you're off to a great start. I'll enjoy watching your progress. Right now, we are having snow! Ugh! So I'm happy to see other people being able to plant out!

My two early planted tomatoes got a little cold from the 27* temperatures. This 40-50* wet weather isn't helping I'm sure.

Here are my plants I've started, tomatoes, peppers, and a tomatillo (he isn't doing well)

I started building my herb box last night. Now trying to decide if a 12" deep by 18" wide box should be 36" to the top off the ground....

Wow, tomato plants out in the garden already in Iowa? That is really pushing your luck by several weeks! :) Glad to see you have plenty of back-ups available as that plant will likely be quite stunted by the cold exposure.

But I'm more concerned about the appearance of your soil in the pics. What amendments, if any, have you added to it and how much. The color and the texture and the crusting that shows in the pics looks like it really needs some heavy amending before any further planting. It appears to have minimal organic matter content to prevent that clumping and compacting. A truck load of quality compost tilled in would do wonders for that garden.

You might also want to give some thought to how you are going to protect your plants from all the road contaminants and traffic emissions.

Dave

PS: Please be sure to add your location/garden zone to your profile page so that it comes up automatically with each post (note the info that follows most user names.

Looks like the plant in the bottle is a goner, Also looks like you used pine wood for the herb box which isn't very good because pine doesn't hold up well for outside, Tomato plants look good do you have extra since I lost all mine!

It is very high clay content, however it really produces. We are pretty fortunate here as our souls are very forgiving. I have added over 5 loads of compost to it. Typically our souls have 3-5% organic matter here. As soon as the rain stops I've got another load of composted horse manure ready to come home.

The pine was what was on hand so I gave it a try. Thinking about sealing it.

Iowa soil is supposed to be some good stuff. Is this your first time planting in the beds pictured? It does look like it could use some more amending but it sounds like you have that covered. Last year I tilled up a new 1100 ft/sq bed and first planted a stand of buckwheat followed by a mixed stand of Groundhog tillage radishes and buckwheat (first stand of buckwheat went to seed before I could weed wack it). The tillage radishes really work well for breaking up a new bed and add a lot of nitrogen for the following years crop (corn) but beware that it will stink up the neighborhood as it rots during a warm spell in the winter. Tilling the bed this spring I was amazed at the tilth it had gained in only one year and it is also draining much better. Your sad Tomatillo should start perking up soon. They are a little fragile for the first week after germination but they really grow fast after a couple weeks.

Yeah, I'm an agronomist and we are very fortunate to have the soils we do here in Iowa. Average commercial corn yields in the area are 200+. Tillage radishes have become very popular here along with a rye grass cover crop following corn in a Corn/soy rotation. I plan to seed some radishes after this summers veggies are done. I have some tillage radish pics I'll post they are on my other phone. They work well to break up headland compaction in fields.

I'm a little confused on how farmers fit in tillage radishes in the same year as corn or soy. Radishes need to be planted by late August or early September in northern zones which is before either corn or beans are harvested. I have heard of broadcasting into the standing corn but don't know how feasible that is for most farmers and how that would affect the corn harvest. Seems like a lot of the radishes would be trampled.

Hagie has highboy application equipment. Some people have placed gandy units on tillage equipment. The tillage radishes are generally used in early harvest fields or prevent plant acres or compacted headlands. Rye is probably more commonly used, broadcast with fall dry fertilizer and vertical tilled in. Generally there is yield drag associated with planting them prior to corn so most guys use them on corn acres going to beans or highly erodible slopes.

You can also get aerial applicators to fly them on for a premium price. ($30/acre)

Here is an update on the onions and garlic. I need to mow and make a nice edge on the garden then mulch them.

One thing you will find out the hard way this year is that the row closest to the grass will be problematic when they get to their mature size in June. They will have 10+ leaves which will be around 18" tall or more and hanging over the grass. It will be very difficult to mow or weed wack close to the bed edge without risking damage to the onion leaves. When I plant onions in an in-ground bed I leave a minimum of 1-1.5' between the first onion row and the grass and put a strip of cardboard down between the onions and grass and mulch with grass clippings over the cardboard.

Ahh yes good point...i'll till up that area when i get the tiller out for the rest of the garden

Be very careful with the tiller as the first row of onions look to be only a few inches from the grass edge. An alternative would be to harvest that row as green onions/scallions in May well before they reach mature size.

Good idea

Update: Did some tilling but didn't use the tiller close to the onions. I'm adding a lot of plants to my garden. Trying to use some square foot gardening techniques but I keep spacing everything much further apart.

Did some planting yesterday and had a couple helpers.

Going to start hardening off the tomato and pepper plants today as well.

My MR. STRIPY that got froze is coming back ok. The Parks whopper i had didn't make it.

I LOVE front yard gardens. Something about showing the neighbors what you're doing to bring good food into the world just makes me happy. Enjoying the pics -- keep em coming!

Garlic on the right.

I would like to build a compost bin. What suggestions do people have? I want something that is "nice" looking to us and the neighbors as my lots make an L shape and it will likely be near my neighbors front yard. Should it be placed in sunlight or shade?

Well more planting is happening here...

Looking good! I'll assume that those pictures were not taken today since most of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota are getting wet right now.

I'm confused.... I assume the field and tractor aren't yours? :)

I'm an agronomist so I work with ~100 farmers raising corn for me.

My onions are starting to fall over...what do I do? just let them fall?

Onions falling over later in growth is normal and often is even manually done to start the maturation process prior to harvest. But you might want to check that premature plant weakness isn't caused by nematodes, thrips or a disease. Your pictured crop of onions looks good but it wouldn't hurt to pull a few to check the roots and cut vertically through the onion looking for brown core or other issues.

I'll take a look and see what the onions look like. I added more mulch because there was a lot of waterhemp and lambsquarter coming through

Burpee is just sent my 3 new transplants and a co worker brought me 6 more tomato plants.

35* temp and patchy frost forecast

I'm going to start weaving my tomatoes later this week. We've had some wind here that they really could have used some support.

Burpee sent my JerseyBoy, BrandyBoy, and SuperSauce. The packaging beat them up a little.

Enjoying your thread... nice looking onion patch, looks even better than mine :)

Not having any problems with animals? Not much will eat the onions that you could fence out, but the brassicas and lettuce... I just had all mine eaten by a groundhog.

The little rabbits and occasional deer visit the garden. The rabbits have gotten my peas. The dog usually protects the garden well.

Well I learned a lot from this garden and packing too many tomatoes in.

We will probably be growing more hybrids in 2016.

Last year was my first really big and successful garden and I learned so much.

I enjoyed watching yours develop