You will have to tell us what you planted, and an idea of just how deep they were planted. Radishes are often the first to come up.

Hi Bo, Guess what? The only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask, so please never, ever, ever hesitate to ask questions here.

Welcome to the forum. I am so glad that you decided to stop lurking and start posting so we can chat with you and get to know you too. There's nothing wrong with lurking and only reading, but it is so much more fun to join in the conversations and participate actively.

Like Amy said, if you'll tell us what seeds you started and how deeply you believe y'all planted them, we'll try to answer your questions. Seeds in the soil generally would not be bothered by these temperatures. There are plenty of kinds of seeds that survive in the soil for decades, whatever the weather.

A friend of mine planted brussels sprouts seeds too late one year, and the soil already was too warm for them to sprout. So, he got nothing there. He went back after a couple of months and sowed the seeds of some sort of summer crop there. and it did fine. Then, in the fall, when the soil had cooled off sufficiently, those brussels sprouts seeds that had been in the ground for probably 4 or 5 months sprouted just fine, and he was harvesting brussels sprouts before Christmas. For him, the late brussels sprouts plants were a very pleasant surprise---and a reminder for all of us that seeds want to grow for us, if we only give them the right conditions that they need for germination.

Much of gardening is simply learning by doing, trying something and repeating it if it works, or trying things a different way if the first attemp fails. This is how we all learn. I always have tried to think of my garden as one gigantic experiment composed of many smaller experiments. The more you experiment, the more you learn. Teach that to your kiddo too---that you two will be learning together and it is okay if things don't work out the first time, because there's always next time. That will teach her that gardening isn't always perfect, but it is worth it to try, try and try again.

Good luck and keep talking to us!

Dawn

We planted radishes, lettuce, peas, Swiss chard, broccoli, carrots, and potatoes. The potatoes were planted at about 2" (I'll come back later add some more top soil to those) and most of the other seeds were probably about 1" to 1.5" (except for the carrots, I was able to get them planted pretty shallow because my daughter was distracted when I planted them). I'm not surprised by the other plants not popping up yet, but I'm just concerned that the radishes are a harbinger of a really unproductive garden.

Like Dawn says no dumb questions here. Welcome and sounds like you are off to a fun start. I learned last year that lettuce does not like to be planted very deep. No wonder i never got a very good stand .And carrots and swiss chard take forever. I keep a wet cloth over my carrot bed until they mostly sprout and then take it off. Hopefully our other experience gardeners will come along.

Kim

Bo, For most things that you planted, the 1-1.5" depth may be a problem. To tackle them one by one:

Radishes--probably will come up but it may take a while.

Lettuce--unlikely to come up from that depth, might want to reseed more. Lettuce is unusual in that it does not strictly need light to germinate, but does seem to germinate much more quickly if the seeds get some light exposure. Just sprinkle seeds on the surface of the soil, lightly press them into the soil but do not cover. Mist lightly. Keep soil moist, not wet, and they should germinate quickly in the weather we're having now.

Peas--probably will come up just fine, but may take a few days longer than usual.

Swiss Chard---it would have been better if the seeds had been sown about 1/2" below the soil surface, but they still may sprout even if 1.5" below soil surface. Swiss Chard seeds are actually small fruits with multiple seeds inside, so when you get sprouts, you'll likely get multiple sprouts in little clusters where each seed was sown. If you don't get sprouts in the next couple of weeks, just sow more seed in the soil right above where the previous seeds were sown. In the future, if you soak Swiss Chard seeds in water for a few hours before planting, they'll sprout more quickly.

Broccoli should sprout just fine as long as you keep the soil moist, not soggy. Usually we start broccoli seed indoors 3-5 weeks before planting time, harden off the seedlings gradually over a week's time to help them adjust to outdoor sunlight and wind, and then put the plants in the ground when they are 3-5 weeks old and have 3 to 5 true leaves. We do this because the cool season is shockingly short in OK some years and starting from transplants helps ensure you'll get a crop before the weather gets too hot. Keep that in mind for future reference. With the soil being warm and air temperatures being really nice right now, I think your broccoli will come up pretty quickly and has a good shot at producing this year, but in a year with colder, wetter soil and cooler air temperatures, you'd want to start with transplants.

Carrots are divas and can take their time sprouting. Kim gave you good advice on them. Keeping something (I use either cardboard weighed day with bricks or a sheet of plywood) on top of the area where carrot seed was sown helps ensure a good crop. You sow the seed, cover with just a little soil, pat down the soil gently to ensure good seed-to-soil contact, mist lightly and cover with something that will help hold in the moisture. What happens is the soil gets dry and crusts over and the tiny carrot seeds have trouble breaking through the soil crust. So, using a board, cardboard, fabric, etc. to hold in the moisture helps keep the soil from crusting over. Just lift the covering once or twice daily to check for sprouts and remove once you start seeing little green sprouts. Another way to help the carrot seeds germinate if you don't want to cover them with anything is to sow radishes right along with them. Sow a radish seed every few inches right there in the row of carrot seeds.. It will germinate more quickly than the carrots, breaking the soil crust for them and helping making it easier for them to germinate.

Potatoes will sprout fine 2" below the soil. I planted mine 8-9" below the soil surface and some of them already are up above the soil surface. That's a lot of growth in a fairly compact time frame. Keep in mind that potatoes want to grow and have a need to grow, so they are going to sprout whether planted deeply or more shallowly. Research has shown that for maximum production, seed potatoes need to have at least 8" of soil above them. This is because the stolons that sprout from the eyes of the potatoes are where the potatoes form, and they all form above the seed potato. So, if you have 2-4" of soil above the seed potatoes, the only potatoes you get will be whatever forms in that 2-4" of soil. If you have 8-10" of soil above the seed potatoes, you'll get more potatoes because they will form along at least 8" of the stolon between the top of the seed potato and the soil line. Planting much deeper than 8" (or heaping much more than 8" of soil and mulch on top of the planted seed potatoes) doesn't really give you more potatoes no matter what some internet sources say, and there is research that backs up that info. Maybe somewhere in a much milder climate than ours where the soil and air temperatures stay mild, potatoes planted really deeply might produce more, but it doesn't happen here because we quickly reach the soil and air temperatures in late spring/early summer that cause the initiation of new potato tubers to stop. So, keeping heaping soil (hopefully loose, friable soil, not clay) on top of your potatoes as you grow, and pile mulch on top of the soil once you think it is heaped up high enough above your potato plants.

Don't fret if seeds don't sprout. Just plant more after a couple of weeks if you aren't seeing any sprouts. There's a reason that so many seeds come in a packet---and it isn't because the average person wants to grow 1,000 carrots or 200 radishes all at one time or 100 lettuce plants. It is to allow for the fact that some seeds won't germinate, some may get washed away or whatever and a gardener may need to replant.

Gardening basically is a learn-by-doing process. We've all been in your shoes at one point in our gardening lives. Every single person here has made mistakes and had seed failures. We've had seeds that never came up because they were planted too deeply, we've had seeds blown away in wind storms, eaten by soil-dwelling creatures, washed away in heavy downpours, etc. etc. etc. Life goes on. We just replant and hope for better results with the next go-round. Things will be fine. If the first batch of seeds y'all sowed don't come up, it is likely the next round will. That's part of the magic of growing.

Even when you're alone in the garden with your child, the two of you are not alone. All of us are with you, hoping for good results for y'all, cheering you on from afar and ready to answer any questions that arise. We'll celebrate with you when your seeds sprout and grow and we'll celebrate with you when you when your get your harvest. In the meantime, we'll always be here to answer questions, offer advice and explain, to the best of our knowledge, why things happen the way they do. You know the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child? It is true, and our plants are children too, and it takes an entire village to share the knowledge and experience and help your and your child raise that garden. Please do not ever hesitate to talk with us about what is going on. There's nothing you'll encounter that someone here hasn't had happen to them too. It is the sharing of the knowledge gained that helps us all grow into more effective and more efficient gardeners.

Dawn

Dawn I would like to have you personally in my garden. Just for a day or well maybe a week. Then you could suggest better easier faster ways of doing things. Sometimes I feel like I am running like crazy and never getting anything done.

Amen, Kim, me too!

I've always heard the rule of thumb is to plant seeds twice as deep as they are wide. So dust like seeds like lettuce, basil, etc are just scattered on the ground, while peas should be about half an inch. Is that right?

Kim, I think you do a great job and I doubt there's anything I could suggest that would improve your garden. Well, having a big dome over it like, you know, those domed football stadiums----that would help keep the crop dusters' overspray/drift off your plants. But we live here in the real world where a domed garden just isn't practical or realistic, is it?

If it is any consolation, you know, I have days just like the rest of y'all where I feel like I've run like a hamster on a wheel all day long and not achieved one single thing that I had on my mental To-Do List when I headed out to the garden to work. I also don't make a written To Do list because it would be too disheartening to see how few tasks I crossed off that list in the course of a day or a week. Or, maybe in a month.

You wouldn't think a person could spend a whole day in a garden and not have anything to show for it, but I swear, some days are just that way. Today was almost one of those for me, but I did get things accomplished---it is just that most of what I did was not anything that an observer would notice. Mostly I dug out Johnson grass where it is sprouting inside the fence line. Since I wasn't tending the garden last fall while we were working on the kitchen remodel, that Johnson grass came creeping in like a snake, slithering all over and hiding long stolons in the mulch and in the soil below. Now it is sprouting everywhere in the beds along the fence. So, I dug and I dug and I dug, and Augustus, the big, old male tom turkey who keeps me company in the garden, quickly discovered Johnson grass stolons and runners are not big, fat worms, but he stayed with me all day anyway and talked to me pretty much non-stop . I'm sure he was asking me why I wasn't digging up something yummy like cut worms or grub worms. Oh well, it just wasn't his day today.

Jen, Pretty much. What I do is just generally plant small seeds the most shallowly, often pressing them into the soil just barely and larger seeds more deeply. Small--shallow, big--deep. It is an easy rule of thumb to follow and works for almost everything. With everything we grow, annuals are easiest. The seeds will sprout pretty much anywhere/everywhere if you don't plant them too deeply, and don't overwater/underwater. Oh, and if the soil temperatures are right. When growing perennials, shrubs, trees, vines, etc. from seed, it gets a lot more complicated because some of them need cold stratification, warm stratification, or alternating cold and warm stratification within very specific temperature ranges. Others need light or some need darkness. It is enough to drive a person mad, and I hate starting picky perennials from seed.

The hard thing about gardening is that about the time you think you have it all figured out, you get some wacky weather, or a strange disease or an unknown varmint/insect in your garden causing a new problem you've never seen before, and then you feel puzzled and confused----just like you're a brand new gardener. Or (Nancy!) you move to a new state/new climate and have to learn what works in a place very different from where you lived and gardened previously. It's all good. When we stop learning......then, what's the point? I try to learn or observe something new in the garden every single day. It keeps me on a quest to keep my brain young and functioning even as my body ages and slows down and becomes old and creaky. If my brain ever starts creaking like my body does, then the garden and I are in trouble.

Dawn

Well said, Dawn--it's all about the journey, isn't it. And I'm loving every minute of it! Man, you should have heard me the first spring I was here, just 2 short years ago. . . starting my third spring this year. I was practically turning summersaults over the fact that I'd moved from Zone 3-4 to Zone 7. I had visions of plants and greenery growing EVERYWHERE around me--all the flowers and plants I could ever hope to have, growing right here in my little corner of paradise. After the floods in June happened (and even though it runs off in our yard, there is ONE low place in the back yard that can get soggy-- which was where the Russian sage and 9-bark were. The Russian sage, which I had heretofore thought impervious to destruction, took one week to die deader than a doornail, and the 9-bark shortly thereafter. In March of that year, I embarked on building my back yard paradise, only to promptly discover all that lovely Bermuda grass lawn that was emerging was nothing but a greedy conman Vegas thug. And worse, that we have no dirt. Just a thin veneer of peat, in most places (save for about a third of the immediate back yard, and the small front yard, where truckloads of dirt had been hauled in)--with rocks--and enormous rocks everywhere underneath. So I quickly regrouped and forged ahead, some of the shine worn off my dreams.

ROTFL. It's all good, though, you are right!

Last summer we were out in the middle of the lake having a grand time fishing, when we saw some thunder clouds moving in from the north/west. We needed to take Titan to land for a break, so headed to the marina, and by the time we got there, the clouds had quickly moved in; I took Titan for a short walk, then we ordered a drink for the patio. Took our drinks out back with the dog, and the storm hit. The wind was so fierce that we couldn't even get around to the front to go inside--so the folks inside were gesturing their sympathies to us. . . was okay, though because we were protected from the wind pretty much. It was bllnding--couldn't see 15 feet away from the dock. It only lasted 30-45 minutes, but we could not believe how bad it was--did a lot of damage to the marina area. . . we were anxious to get home and see what had happened, and on the way home (a mile away), saw at least a dozen trees down. This storm wasn't even in the forecast! We lucked out. Two oaks down in the back part of the property, but none in the yard and house area. Many weren't so lucky, and the roofers were in the neighborhood the rest of the summer fixing folks' roofs. The rest of our damage was superficial and only took us 4-5 hours to clean up. (And we have a metal roof, so maybe some dings, but no fixing required.) But a good lesson in how quickly things can turn bad. . . like I'm realizing with the fire stories. We just can be thankful for every GOOD day and buck up and get to to work when things go wrong.

I love learning new things! It's so amazing that the more one learns, the more one realizes how little he or she knows. And, uh, the garden and I ARE in trouble! LOL We set up an appointment last week for our tax lady (Thurs at 1 pm.) The next day (Friday) I was getting ready to go mow leaves and GDW said, "Wait! We have to be at the tax lady's at 1 today." I started laughing and said, "No, we had to be at the tax lady's YESTERDAY at 1! " Hadn't given it a moment's thought until he said that. So I had to call tax lady and apologize and re-set the appt.--which we DID remember this time.

Update: I may have been stressing out a little bit prematurely. We've got radishes sprouting up in all the spots we planted them in, and the lettuce is trying to poke up in a few places as well. I'm not sure about the other things yet, but I'm not going to start panicking for a few more days...okay I'll probably be panicking by Monday. It's hard to focus on work when there are so many exciting things happening in the back yard!

There is kind of a funny story with our broccoli. I planted some seeds in containers in early February, and they were starting to grow nicely, but a cat into the sunroom did creep. Our cat snuck out there and ate all my broccoli and pea sprouts! (I was testing the peas for seed viability, they were given to me and kind of old.) So instead of trying over in the house we just direct planted them when we planted the other seeds. I don't understand what would possess a cat to eat seedlings, but hopefully she has enough sense to avoid anything that may be toxic.

Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement, even if the garden is a bust the little one and I are having lots of fun playing in the dirt.

Brian

Brian, Congrats on the emerging seedlings! I'm so happy for y'all.

Beware the cats. My cats love pea and bean seedlings more than anything else on earth. They will eat every single one. I have to put hoops covered with bird netting over my bean and seed beds to keep the cats out, or they will eat each plant as it emerges from the soil. Once the beans have 3 or 4 true leaves, I remove the netting and the cats don't eat the seedlings any more. I believe it is just the sprouts they love, not really the leave or, later on, the beans themselves.

Sometimes you can divert the cats by planting cat grass, catnip and catmint for them. I have catmint, in particular, scattered around the garden. It never really looks good because the cats eat it, roll on top of it, etc. but it deeps the rest of the garden fairly safe from the cats.

The fun with your child is the important thing right now. Y'all are making memories and having fun. That matters. In each succeeding year, you'll continue to have fun and make memories, and the harvests will get better and better the longer you garden too.

I have so many happy memories of gardening with my grandparents, my dad, many aunts and uncles, neighbors growing up....and then, later on, of gardening with my husband and our son, and still later on, with our then-step-granddaughter (I took the divorce of our son and her mother harder than anyone because I lost my precious little garden buddy!). Even now, my nieces and nephews and their spouses and children are convinced that the best salsa in the world is the salsa that comes from our garden and they believe it tastes the way it does because it is made with fresh, home-grown tomatoes. They all rent and live in apartments and have small children so none of them are gardeners yet, but I have high hopes that someday, when they live in a house with a yard, I'll be teaching them how to grow tomatoes and to make their own salsa.

Dawn

Ah, Dawn, the secret ingredient in your salsa is LOVE. The tomatoes help, but only love would make you work like you do to produce your salsa!

LOL. I tried to tell my nieces it is easy to make and that they could do it, and they insisted no, no, no, it is your home-grown heirloom tomatoes. Next time I'll tell them that Amy says the secret ingredient is Love. They'd probably agree.