Yea I always just direct seed the squash about 2-3 per spot and thin to one healthy plant after a few weeks.

tana10115...it's not necessary to transplant the tomatoes deeper than they were in the pot, but if you have tall or leggy transplants it can really help to plant them deeper as it will both help to support the young plants and the little 'hairs' on the tomato stem will grow out into roots.

Yea what Chris said :)

For example, I have a 2-ft tall Sun Gold plant in my house lol. I will need to bury it deep to help support it.

Did you get frost Chris? My peppers eggplants and tomatoes were hopefully covered.

No frost here. Looks like the brunt of it was Northwest of me.

Ok good so I should have been safe then. :)

Weather has no impact at all. I just brought pepper and eggplants seedlings back to garage, just in case. The tomato seedlings in ground look greener than the one still in pots.

Some bush snap beans sprouted in 16 days. Not sure if this is normal, or I need to reseed them again. I have plenty good seeds. I soaked them this time and I do not know if that is the problem. Or the soil is not warm enough.

I've finished planting peppers, finishing tomato very soon. Trying to finish digging the new bean area. I like to get pumpkin area ready and drop the pumpkin seeds, mainly Japanese pumpkin.

Plan to plant out the eggplant this weekend when it warms up. Then seed sweet corns and soybean/Edamame. Then sweet potato at late May or early June.

Not sure if the above is ok. Still learning things. Good is that I keep a record of last year's gardening.

Red, I had the same issue with some of my snap peas. Sprouted long after sowing them. Might be soil temps.

I soaked them for one day or two. After I saw the sprout, I planted them. So I know the seeds were viable. And only a few sprouted after 16 days. And I do not see follow-ups. I'm going to dig some, to see if the seeds are rotten. I have plenty seeds, not late at all.

Last year, I planted edamame in mid May. All were rotten, not a single sprout. So I'm going to plant them in late May, or early June. I have 6 edamame varieties.

I'm having germination issues with one type of pickle cucumber that I planted on May 7. I planted 3 types that day - H19 little leaf, County Fair, and Alibi. Alibi germinated at about 70%, County Fair about 80% within 7 days. So far the little leaf is at 0% after 9 days. The seeds were from Reimer seeds this year but their reputation is not very good according to Garden watch dog so I might have got a packet of duds. I was wondering why the packet had 60+ seeds when it was supposed to have only 20. They can give you 10,000 seeds in a packet to make up for poor germination but who wants to plant 100 seeds to get 10 plants?

I am going to reseed in a couple days and give them one more try.

Good to know. Looks as though many people have posted negative reviews on Reimer Seeds on this site. Either horrible germination rate or terrible turnaround time on shipping.

Hope you get some to germinate!

Time will tell. The Alibi were also from Reimer as well as some Corno di Torro and Cornito Giallo pepper seeds and I got decent but not great germination from those but those packets pretty much had the correct seed count with maybe a couple extra. I think they knew the H19 little leaf had poor germination and sold them anyway. I'll stick with Johnny's or a couple other seed vendors that I trust going forward. I am going to start a seed germination test tonight on 5 seeds and see if any sprout. I guess when I reseed I will just go ahead and plant all of the 50 seeds I have left and hope to get a few. For sure, no need to hold any back for next year.

Thank you LoneJack and Chris, that's helpful information regarding tomato plantings. I'm relieved to say all my seedlings have made it through the lows from two nights ago. I know I planted my nightshades early, I was a bit eager but thankfully they've all pulled through. Let's hope for warmer temperatures now.

Great! Glad they all made it safe. There's no scare like that in the foreseeable future. I'm praying we don't get any freak frosts after Memorial Day weekend.

For leggy tomato seedlings, you don't have to actually go deep, you can plant them with the stems along the ground, just so they are well covered and watered in. The exposed plant will quickly orient itself upright.

Put down my 2nd batch of tomato seedlings.

Need to put on mulch to keep the grass in the middle. Run out of cages and will just stake them with bamboo sticks.

For the 1st batch, some tomato plants have started to send out flowers.

Looks great! What varieties do you have there?

For tomato, I grow:

Aunt Ruby's green tomato

Carbon purple

Cherokee purple

Riesenstraube

Schimmeig Hollow

and two beefsteak types.

Today seeded Blue Lake bush beans, Roma II beans and Painted Mountain corns. When I tried to re-seed the Dragon Tongue beans, I found some beans sprouting under the soil. I pulled two of them. So I decided to give them one more week, then re-seed what would not come up. When I re-seeded Blue Lake, I did not find any live beans in the soil.

Next are the pole beans, cukes and kabocha/pumpkins.

Awesome! I'm debating whether or not to sow the beans yet. I'm doing Fortex. I suppose I could sow some tomorrow and sow them again if need be. It is forecasted to be somewhat rainy this weekend though :-/ Weather is looking great, temp-wise. I will definitely get my peppers and tomatoes out this weekend.

I'm back!

Garlic has some browning... hopefully just environmental.

Peppers and eggplant unsurprisingly look pretty crappy. Hopefully they will recover with minimal stunting. You can see the issues largely with the insufficient hardening off.

Potatoes and beets looking good.

Onions looking great too

Brussels

Green Magic

Cauliflower

Lettuce and carrots

Mustard

I'm back!

Garlic has some browning... hopefully just environmental.

Peppers and eggplant unsurprisingly look pretty crappy. Hopefully they will recover with minimal stunting. You can see the issues largely with the insufficient hardening off.

Potatoes and beets looking good.

Onions looking great too

Brussels

Green Magic

Cauliflower

Lettuce and carrots

Mustard

I'm back!

Garlic has some browning... hopefully just environmental.

Peppers and eggplant unsurprisingly look pretty crappy. Hopefully they will recover with minimal stunting. You can see the issues largely with the insufficient hardening off.

Potatoes and beets looking good.

Onions looking great too

Brussels

Green Magic

Cauliflower

Lettuce and carrots

Mustard

Peas

My only surviving spinach

Leeks

All in all so far good for the cool season. The warm season is looking iffy.

Looking great, overall! The peppers and eggplant don't look terrible! Warm temps have arrived and it's supposed to reach 80's next week. Maybe that will help.

Your carrots, leeks and onions are further along than mine. They look great. I may have mine in a spot that's a little too shady.

How was the trip?

Vacation pics: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3901942/italy

Some of my onions that are in shadier spots are not as far along. The pic was of the earliest planting in the sunniest spot. You grew onions and leeks from seed this year?

None of the cucurbit seeds I planted 10 days ago sprouted. Soil is too cold....

Yeah I started them indoors, but they got hit with a hard freeze after transplanting. Surprisingly there is about 8(leeks and bunching onions combined) that survived - they are just growing slowly.

I have 2 beds with the black cover over them. I wanted to put the bulk of everything out this weekend, but now it's looking rainy and cloudy. It might actually work in my favor to plant out this weekend. Now the transplants will have a better transition without direct sunlight.

When you sow cucurbits, you usually put 3-5 seeds to a hill, right? Do you always thin them down to 1 plant?

Cucurbits require a lot of space. The vining types can be planting at about 1 foot spacing on a hill if they have plenty of vining space, but zucchini and bush squash need a good 4-6 square feet each plant.

Since I have raised beds I always just put them at the end of the bed and give them something to climb on, so they don't take up space in the rest of the bed.

In the past I feel like the cucurbits seedlings I purchased had 2-3 plants per pot. I always just let them grow and never thinned them. Unless I'm crazy and there was only one seedling in the pot. I'm just curious because I'm growing them myself this year and didn't want to overcrowd them.

It depends if they are vining or bush... you can probably grow 2-3 vining plants in the same spot, and trellis/train them like you say, but better to give them a little room between plants. 2-3 bush plants are just going to be fighting each other and won't be easy to train away from your beds.

Ok thanks - I'll do that. I am growing all vine varieties this year.

Old Dutch, thank you for the guidance. Peter, what great pics of your veggies and Italy! I feel inspired to go but the garden is eating all my money! Chris, I'm doing some curcurbits in my raised beds too, just some sugar baby watermelons and cantaloupes, separated in far corners of my garden. I'm hoping to succeed in uploading some pictures below of my raised beds in progress. My husband is a great carpenter and conscientious gardener, and the building is still in progress. Hopefully more pix as veggies progress and garden is finished. I live in rural northern Ulster County, NY and have bears and deer plus various critters so even though my yard is fenced in I'm also fencing in the vegetable beds. Probably another two weeks to finish fencing and make a gate. The enormous gravel foundation is going to get trimmed and hidden by a stone wall that will match other stone walls my husband has built in other parts of the yard.

fencing in progress, 18x20 raised 20" beds, deep gravel foundation followed by hardware cloth and landscape fabric.

Brandywine and hybrid beefsteak tomatoes with marigolds and celery on the edges.

1/2 dozen each of broccoli, brussel sprouts and collards with a box of screws. Under the pea gravel paths are hoses going to each bed to feed drip hoses. All on timers.

I've gone back and forth with row covers having planted my nightshades way early. It's my first vegetable garden in over a decade from one in a different house so I'm a wee bit eager and excited.

Getting the cross beams up around the four foot posts. Decking spindles will go up this weekend. Will put deer netting on inside in hopes of keeping out small animals.

Wow - what a terrific setup! It's really coming along well.

Looks nice Tana!

The groundhogs are the worst. Deer are easily discouraged but groundhogs will try to find a way in. You really need to bury it good, or bend it outwards on the ground, to prevent them from digging. The top should also be floppy to prevent them from climbing.

Peter, I am surprised that you planted eggplants this early. I know you used plastic to warm up. For some reason, the eggplant seedlings are very tender. I tried to harden them off, and each time they wilt. My pepper plants have been out 10 days, and I try to harden eggplant again now. To me, eggplant likes warm weather even more.

Red,

I planted them early because I went on vacation... not what I wanted to do.

For me the peppers are more heat loving than the eggplants - they are more easily stunted. But they are both heat loving.

Tana, you have a great setup! I just do not have that much energy. Every day, I keep digging dirt and pull weeds!

One thing I would like to ask is your beds are built on top of gravel, so how high you keep the raised bed?

Wow, everybody's vegetable gardens look great. This year my garden looks like crap. I lost most of my onions so I went out and bought plants to fill in.

My prize rare native onions mostly disappeared when I applied a mulch of cottonseed meal. The old perennial leeks are doing alright. But the black garlic seems to have been lost. A tiny native onion seems to be hanging in there.

Wasn't successful getting nodding onion from seed this year. Lost all my Italian onion too. Next year I'll start early and try to stay well.

Just got a few peas to grow out for next year. I'm dealing with a situation at the public garden. It an unexpected issues but one I have to deal with.

Potatoes were removed, lettuce, celery, etc. Only got the pots outside my window. Little depressed about losing all my hard work.

Anyway my earliest beans were purple and garden of Eden, the first rattlesnake too. The heat loving beans haven't broke ground yet. Hoping for more runner beans this year.

I got the brilliant idea to put a seed tray of pumpkin, melon, and squash together. The local field mouse then got the equally brilliant idea to dig the soil out of all 72 cells and eat the tasty seeds. I planted twice before I figured it out.

You see the second time I planted a row of bitter melon seed. The mouse chipped one of those, spit it out and abandoned the tray. So I got a few melons up.

I was hoping that mouse would eat slugs but she ignores them, She prefers sun ripened cherry tomatoes, grain, and seedlings. Best guess slugs might be a famine food.

Mice are rare on rooftop gardens due to the local hawks.

Bright spot, its been a good year for carrots. The onion starts are doing well. The herbs are all tasty. Really happy with the parsley. Trying to get one last crop of lettuce in.

My miners lettuce just went to seed, definitely planting more of that next year, it's gorgeous.

The peanuts will be started indoors after one of my seed trays are available.

Well Redsun, my land sort of all gradually goes downhill, so one side of the raised beds is on about 15" of gravel and the opposite side is on about 6" of the same, level gravel. The raised beds are 20" deep because my husband thought the extra height might save my back some (he's truly the one with all the energy). The fencing is about 3 1/2 feet up from the top of the beds so 5' or 6' and change to what will be the top of the fence depending on what side of the garden one's on. Hope I made sense to your question.

May I ask for a recommendation on what's the best thing to grow green bean vines up? I was thinking of making a teepee with some bamboo poles but am wondering if the bean plants won't get too dense as it grows up a narrowing top? recommendations much appreciated.

This weekend I put down most of my pumpkin/squash. Most are green kabocha, then Red Kuri, butternut, winter wax gourd. Still need to plant Tatume and probably Tennessee sweet potato squash. Spent a lot of time to arrange them to reduce the chance of cross pollination.

Here are the snow peas.

Everyone's gardens are looking good and starting to mature. The only new planting for me this weekend was 15 King Richard leeks that replaced some harvested lettuce and starting some bunching onions for August plant out.

I harvested a couple broccoli heads and some side shoots, bunching onions, Radishes, a few dozen garlic scapes and about 12 heads of lettuce. A couple of the Muir lettuce had bottom rot so I fed them to the chickens. I think the Muir were planted to close...I gave them 9" spacing but they needed at least 12" so I basically had a hedge of Muir.

My Sungold has a couple little pea sized tomatoes growing and a couple of the Carmen peppers also have little fruit that I should probably have cut off because the plants are still pretty small.

tana, pole beans get very tall. I've had mine go past the 8ft trellis I made and fall over the top and grow another 2-3ft down. What I did was screw (2) 8ft 1x1s to either side of the end of my bed, then put eye hooks on each one and secured trellis netting to it. It's worked great for me for 4 years. Though some spots are frayed, I haven't had to replace the netting once.

Red, those snow peas look great!

Great, Jack! I'm looking forward to scapes! Some of my Music garlic has finally begun growing scapes.

I potted 3 tomatoes, 4 peppers, and sowed some Fortex beans this weekend. I'll plant out the rest of the tomatoes and peppers next weekend and the weekend after. I have zucchini, butternut squash and cucumber seedlings that I started indoors. I know it's not necessary to do so, but I'm going to do 1 of each started indoors and 1 of each sowed directly. Just a little experiment :-)

The only thing I can really harvest at the moment is the Red Russian kale.

Wow, amazed you guys are already harvesting veggies! Thanks for the tip on the beans. We did make a trellis this weekend similar to what you described Chris. I like your experiment, I look forward to your findings!

Found a bunch of aphids on my snap peas this evening! Grrrr. This is the first time I've actually witnessed aphids in person. I crushed every one of the SOBs. I'm concerned that the snap peas might end up with PEMV. I suspect that's what my peas got last year, but I never saw the aphids.

Interesting. I get a lot of aphids in my fava beans, but not in my snow peas and sugar snap peas. I figure the fava beans just attract the aphids. It does not appear to be any harms done to the fava beans. I just see a lot of ants near the aphids. Maybe the ants are taking of the aphids. I'd like to see ladybugs to take care of aphids too.

I'm not treating the aphids, as of now. Wait and see.

I compared my peas vs the photos I took late year. It appears they are on target. I got harvest of peas in early June. This year I tried to be on the early side, but the cold spring held things back.

I've read that the ants will herd the aphids. They like the honeydew that the aphids excrete. The ants will even remove their wings to keep them from leaving.

There isn't much of an insect presence in my garden yet, so I think that's why the aphids are roaming freely. I too would like to see some ladybugs. Would be a pleasure to watch them feast.

I just do not know. I do not even see a hole in my fava bean plants. Each year, we see a lot of wild life in my garden since I'm close to 100+ acres of vacant land. Ladybugs, stingbugs and J. beetles can have their presence known easily.

I have 4 areas of peas, with the sugar snap peas are 15' long. The only insect problem I see are my cabbages, some holes on the leaves. I think that is pretty common. I may just leave some cabbages for bug traps. I can spray the aphids with the holticultural oil. But just want to see what happens next.

Well hopefully you get some of the good guys soon.

Ok - I think it's about that time we start a new thread...in Vegetable Gardening this time. We are almost at 150 comments now.

Seed Starting Time V here it is. I bet we'll see a bunch of harvest pics in this one :-)