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We've had three straight below-freezing nights with frost, including one that was around 20 degrees, and I'm seeing no sign of damage to the one that's in the ground. Our extension service says that kale can be transplanted on February 15, which is a curious date to me. We’ll get plenty of hard...

I’ve laid out the cardboard for my walkways, and now I’m waffling on how I want to mulch. Part of me wants to mulch the entire vegetable area and then just dig through the mulch when I plant, but part of me is concerned that the mulch would slow the soil’s warm-up in the spring. I have a contact...

@baymule Thanks for the heads-up on this. I've already got plenty of everything for this year, but I can see myself stocking up next year from there. Yeah, my Daddy had a vegetable garden as well and I recall helping him plant when I was probably somewhere between the ages of my daughters (5 and...

So...going wayyyyyyyyy back to the second post in this thread... ...last year I just stuck some seeds in the ground after the last frost, so I didn't realize how much another aspect of my life is a HUGE asset... I WORK FROM HOME AND RARELY TRAVEL--For the last 9 years I've been a Consultant...

Quick update...will try to respond to individual comments later this evening... 10 of the 12 broccoli seeds we planted the other day have germinated. I grew tired of all the conflicting information about when I could put kale in the ground here, so I just put one of them in there yesterday...

Wow! This was my first time germinating with both the heating mat and the dome cover over the peat pellets, and I must say that I'm thoroughly happy/impressed. We have kale and spinach seedlings trying to poke through already--less than 48 hours after planting!

Just ran across a great article with some detail around how long seeds typically are viable. Posting here for reference: https://www.superseeds.com/blogs/know-your-roots/the-germination-explanation-how-long-do-seeds-last VEGETABLES: Asparagus - 3 years Beans - 3 years Beet - 4 years...

Planted 12 broccoli (arcadia), 6 more kale (ragged jack this time), 6 cabbage (brunswick), and 12 spinach (bloomsdale longstanding) this evening in peat pellets on a heating mat in the mini-greenhouse. Best part: my two incredibly sweet and devastatingly cute helpers. ❤️❤️❤️ #DaddysGirls

Did a little thinning this morning. I have 15 red Russian kale seedlings now.

To be clear, I'm not tracking my expenses to justify my gardening; we track and categorize *every* expense. We even avoid using cash like the plague so that the overwhelming majority of our transactions can be downloaded into our budgeting software directly from our accounts, rather than having...

We are strict budgeting folks here. We're navigating public vs. private school costs, college for two kids, and because we have daughters, two weddings to pay for 20ish years from now. ;) We actually have four distinct line-items in our 2019 household budget that relate to garden/yard: Garden...

Yup, and before the storm comes in, I got a fair bit done today: Went to the county landfill and got 1900 pounds of compost to put in the flower garden. Put stakes in the ground and ran strings to mark walkways vs. growing areas and also to define where the drip lines need to go. Began laying...

Feeling extremely pleased with it this morning!

Just got back from my first class of the year from the Extension Service: "Planning the 3-Season Vegetable Garden." Per the class description...."Vegetable gardening is especially rewarding in the Piedmont because we can grow food at least 10 months of the year! The key is good planning and...

Red russian raggedjack. I also have some red ursa and some red russian heirloom. (Yeah, I have too much kale seed.)

First germination! Tiny kale seedlings are starting to emerge in my mini greenhouse. A few pics: The little space heater has been a surprising star. Even on nights that have gotten into the lower 20s, the greenhouse has remained in the 55 to 80° range all night long.

Oh....worth noting: we've had an unusual stretch of above-freezing nights, which is what allowed me to get the worms now with confidence that they'll be fine. (They were actually nearly 100% below the surface in less than 2 minutes.) It hasn't been below freezing since 12/27, and 1/9 looks like...

Updates... All seeds have arrived in the mail or have been purchased locally, I think. I'll do an inventory soon to make sure. @ducks4you I did end up buying an "herb garden mix" that included oregano. I tilled the entire vegetable area (roughly 700 sq ft) in a couple of hours yesterday...

3-10 days for germination, per the packaging.

OK. I decided to set up six peat pots with 2 kale seeds in each one: POTS 1&2: The Dr. Earth Planting mix above. POTS 3&4: Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix. POTS 5&6: Soil from my garden. (Everything was started outdoors in the dirt last year.) The specific seeds planted were...