Hiya Rebecca! I'm not an expert. Well, I'm pretty awesome with soil stuff, but growies need give me more time to be a so-called expert hehe

It's not too late for garlic. Not yet. Now is probably just about right. In fact, I have my garlic cloves ready to plant. They need a couple months of cold to grow well. So, there's time. Others have had success at growing garlic after winter solstice. (this month)

I'll leave the squash and shallots for someone else's response.

Beets: Optimal germination temperatures would be at 77 degrees where more would germinate and do so quickest. In fact, I'll link Tome Clothier's germination table for you so you can keep optimal germination temperatures in mind when you're starting any of these. Knowing the optimal temps is a sure fire way of starting any seeds without too much trouble.

If you have a compassionate mind and a steady hand, you can germinate the beets in a baggie indoors. Place them in .. like dixie cups filled with moist peat moss. Swing them outside to get acclimated to the weather change, 1hr the first day, 2 hours the next... etc. (because even if they're not plants, they're sensitive. It's like exposing their private parts to cold without acclimation and could kill them quickly) until the seeds they're comfy being outdoors all day. Then rip the cups from around the soil and place them in the prepared garden area or grow bags being careful not to disturb the roots. Gently water in.

Remember, beets are only semi cold hardy and need mulch or other covers during the coldest periods of winter or you could wait until later when the winter temps are not so harsh. Here is the OSU Gardening Guide that lists "general" planting dates. Note that our weather can be erratic and we can have late freezes. Be prepared to protect the semi-hardy and more tender varieties (like broccoli).

Broccoli: your grow bags will work with broccoli if your soil medium is really really good. Good means lightweight, airy but able to retain moisture and comes with all the nutrients to get it started well. Broccoli, like most brassica varieties, is a heavy feeder. You'll need to be certain to feed it while it grows. In the ground, this requires a lot of growing space so the roots can stretch out far and deep to access the nutrients and micronutrients that it craves.

Container types will need excellent loose and friable soil medium so they can breathe well and access whatever you'll be feeding it. Confined spaces or even heavy clay soils can cause them to grow smaller in size, but they will grow and produce with adequate sunlight, care and nutrients. Note that brassicas taste better when the flower (the fruit) has been exposed to cool or cold temperatures. You won't have this if you winter sow broccoli as they'll be maturing in our heat, but I've done it and wasn't too disappointed, but like your Mom I love the stuff. So, if they don't taste great, that's why. Be sure to start some in the summer for a fall crop.

If I were doing in grow bags, I'd buy my soil medium. I don't ever buy soil and mostly make my own starting soil, so I cannot make a great recommendation for you. i have heard of a lot of successes with grow bags. If i were limited in space, that's what I would use because the soil gets good air flow.

It's perfectly fine to buy extra and over seed to get good germination rates. Just thin out the seedlings to the amount you want. You do this after transplanting because you'll have failures at every stage.

I have my outdoor winter sowing jugs ready, but I will not put seeds in them until mid-late January, because when it warms up like right now the seeds will often sprout in response to end up being killed when it gets cold again.

It rarely is too late to plant anything at this time of the year since we're in the winter doldrums.

Technically speaking, garlic can be planted any day of the year. It typically is planted in September, October or November here, depending on how warm the autumn is, but still will produce even if planted in January or February. It just won't produce as well as it would have if it had been planted earlier. The later you plant it, the less time it has to grow before the summer heat pushes it towards harvest time. Also, the later you plant it, the less time is has to accumulate enough chilling. If you've got it, you certainly should plant it because whatever it produces will be a lot more than you'll get if you don't plant it.

You probably can grow some of the smaller squash plants in 20 gallon grow bags, but heat will be your (and their) enemy. Squash plants tend to wilt in the summer heat, and that is more of a heat reaction than a reaction to dry soil, as they'll wilt even in wet ground. However, the plants do suck up and use a lot of moisture to keep those large leaves hydrated, and you may have trouble keeping the root zone consistently moist enough in the worst of the summer heat. If I wanted to grow squash in a grow bag, I'd select one of the varieties bred expressly for growing in containers. Squash may stay too stressed when grown in containers and stressed plants attract insects more readily, so keep that in mind since squash pests almost always have trouble with squash bugs and squash vine borers even when the plants are not stressed.

Shallots normally are planted in the fall, just like garlic and perennial onions. They probably would do well if planted now as I don't think they are day-length sensitive, but they will do better almost always from a fall planting. Most retailers only ship them for fall planting. Sometimes retail stores have them in bags at this time of the year because people want them and ask for them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they should be planted at this time of the year. It is doable, but it is not ideal.

Beets like to germinate in warm weather and grow in cooler weather, making them ideal for a fall crop. It often can be difficult to get them to sprout outdoors in winter because the soil temperatures are so low. I don't grow beets often, but when I do, I germinate them indoors and then move them outdoors when the weather gets warmer in spring. The issue with the beet seeds being so slow to sprout in late winter/early spring is that often the seed rots in cold, wet soil or washes away in heavy rainfall or gets eaten by pests before it can sprout, and meanwhile the gardener is waiting, waiting, waiting for endless weeks for the beets to sprout.

Every one of us gardens in different conditions depending on our location, the type of microclimate we have (mine is colder than the surrounding area, so I have to take that into consideration), our weather pattern in any given week, month, season or year, our soil or growing medium, etc. It takes time to work out what works for a specific gardener in their location with their specific growing conditions and their specific soil, soil pH, water, prevailing wind, etc. You shouldn't be afraid to experiment widely with how to grow different things because it is that very experimentation that will show you what works best for you. While we can offer general guidelines, none of us is growing in exactly your same location or same conditions, and most of us are not growing as much in containers as you do.

Anything planted outdoors in January through March, and often April and earliest May as well, may occasionally need protection from extra-cold weather, and that is doubly true of containers since they sit above grade level and lack the insulation provided by the ground to in-ground plant roots. When you grow in a container, the plants are considered to be growing one USDA zone colder than your actual USDA zone.

As Bon briefly alluded to by mentioning how some wintersown seeds can sprout here and then freeze afterwards, this is one of the hazards of wintersowing in an area that often lacks snow cover and which often has wildly erratic temperatures even in winter. People who wintersow in milk jugs that get buried in snow can rely on the snow to insulate the containers and keep the temperatures from fluctuating wildly like they do here. This both prevents germination from occurring too early and also helps keep the temperature inside the jugs from fluctuating wildly. I almost never wintersow since I have a light shelf indoors and a greenhouse outdoors. Wintersowing can be useful for perennials that need cold stratification, but I can provide that cold stratification by sowing seeds in a small flat in a sterile soil-less growing medium and then putting them in a ziplock bag in a dorm-sized fridge left over from our son's college days. We just have too much erratic winter weather most years where our highs can hit the 60s and 70s, followed by nights in the 20s and 30s or even colder, and uninsulated wintersown jugs can perform erratically in wildly fluctuating temperatures. When I wintersow, I have to keep everything in a transluscent plastic tote with a lid that snaps on securely or the varmints that roam at night will get into everything, even when I keep the wintersown stuff on the porch.

When growing in containers, always use a soil-less medium made to drain exceptionally well. The specific brand doesn't matter that much as quality can be inconsistent even with well-known brands. If I wanted the best growing medium available, I'd buy Pro-Mix but it can be very pricey, and while I might use it for seed-sowing, I wouldn't spend the bucks required to fill large containers with it. The worst stuff I ever purchased was Miracle Grow Organic, which smelled terrible and killed tons of plants. I rarely lose plants, but the MG Organic killed oodles and oodles of them. I'll never, ever, ever, ever buy it again. Based on the horrific smell and the quick plant death, I'd say it had too much poultry litter or something similar in it. I'd check with a reputable local nursery that sells its own soil mixes and see if I could buy it in bulk if I had a lot of containers to fill. You can make your own using Al's 5-1-1 mix from the Container Forum here at GW or his gritty mix, but sometimes it can be hard to find all the ingredients locally.

I can't get beets to grow. I have tried Bull's blood, Cylindra and Early Wonder. I might get a few to germinate, but then the seedlings falter or freeze. This is just me. I recommend piracicaba sprouting broccoli. It doesn't head up like regular broccoli but it keeps making little buds for a long time. You might need 3 or4 plants. But I had one what survived from Spring until fall even with the hot summer. It was bred for heat, but it was surprisingly cold tolerant as well.

I grew Piricicaba for several years and liked its performance. It did survive summers (even the awful summer of 2011) at the west end of the garden where it got morning sun and then shade to dappled shade in the afternoons. However, it was an aphid magnet, and I usually don't have aphids in my garden, so eventually I just stopped growing it. I never could figure out what it was about the Piricicaba that attracted aphids. I could have 20 broccoli plants----10 Packman in a row with a row of 10 Piricicaba right beside them, and every Piricicaba would have aphids and the Packman plants would have none. It just defied logic. There are lots of other sprouting broccoli and they do perform well, though they aren't as heat-tolerant as Piricicaba.

Shhh, don't tell my aphids.

You have your own aphids? That's great. It means you will have lady bugs. See, I can turn even aphids into a positive thing!

I have lady bugs. In the mudroom. In the greenhouse. In our Fire Rehab vehicle, where they apparently fly in while we have the doors open at a fire and then find places to hibernate. The other day at a fire, a friend was picking lady bugs out of my hair. It was hysterically funny, except perhaps to the lady bugs themselves. One bit me on the neck and then I lost my patience with them and started pulling them off my FD hoody. I could have ignored a lady bug crawling up my sleeve or whatever as long as they weren't biting. I think they climbed onto me while we were on our way to the fire. Who'd think that lady bugs would try to overwinter in a Suburban? Every fire we've been to this week, I keep finding lady bugs on me. I guess we need to empty out the vehicle and remove them all, but I hate to put the lady bugs out into the cold cruel world with a big cold spell coming in a few days.

Something bigger than aphids is eating the leaves on my variegated lemon tree when I set it outside for sunshine. I think that something is chickens. I'm going to have to put the lemon tree out in the garden for sunshine, and then be sure to close the garden gate and also then be sure to bring the tree in before dark. It is getting ready to bloom and the citrus blooms have the yummiest aroma. I did check the lemon tree and it doesn't have aphids, so that probably means the greenhouse doesn't have them either (perhaps because of the overwintering lady bugs).

I love the wealth of information I get here, and I love how y'all are so willing to share what you know.

I think I'm going to go ahead and try beets this spring in the grow bags. I'll move them to full sun a couple weeks ahead of time, and maybe cover them with dark plastic to help warm the soil. Dawn, when you say that you sprout them inside, do you do them in cups with soil, or just in a coffee filter in a baggie? I may try both if they have a chance to work.

Amy, I may try the Piricicaba along with a couple of regular plants. I hear they do well in a 7 to 10 gallon pot, and just a couple should keep my mom full of broccoli.

I may try the butternut and acorn squashes in a plastic baby swimming pool, or I guess better in two. I picked dwarf varieties for a reason, and that's space. I'm only growing them for Mom, and she's made it a point to say she loves these. Squash, spinach, tomatoes, and cucumbers are what she wants most. The broccoli I'm trying just to see if I can do it. She's offered to pay to build me an asparagus bed, too. I need to think about that.

I'm thinking I'm going to split up the tomatoes this year, put some in grow bags and some in the ground. The ones in the ground did way better than I expected last year. It'll be a good experiment, I can do one plant of each variety in each place. Something will have to work out, right? I have clay, but not hard red clay, and I haven't cleaned up leaves in 10 years, so the soil has been somewhat amended by those already.

Rebecca, In a coffee filter in a baggie. If you want to make it happen even more quickly, soak the seeds in water for a few hours before you put them in the coffee filter.

Clay soil, particular red, brown or black clay (and I'm not sure about yellow or gray clay) generally is very fertile due to its high naturally-occurring mineral content. With just a little amending to ensure good drainage during heavy rainfall, it can be very productive. With a lot of amending, it becomes off-the-charts productive. Don't be afraid to give clay a chance. It might surprise you. It isn't perfect, of course, but I've grown some awesome plants in some awful clay.

Dawn