The first official day of spring. Around our area nothing but a cold day with snow so Mother Nature is having a laugh on us. Still, it just has to get nicer and I know many of you down south have been very busy planting.

Come join us in our veggie garden discussions.

Tomorrow I will be planting my Provider beans. They can tolerate colder soil, but it has been fairly warm here so they should be fine.

Greens and sugar snap peas are coming along. Also indoor seedlings are coming out in the sun a bit as weather warms. Tomatoes and basil and zinnias otter up to larger aee pots and I run them out in the morning then take them back in at dark. Whew I can't wait to get them in the ground.

Ah, basil! I lost all mine. I need to replant!

Last year I tried to grow basil from seed. That did not work at all. I don't know what I did wrong but absolutely nothing came up. I ended up buying 6 packs of plants and planting those out and then I had plenty of basil.

I have no luck with basil also. Too cold here. I grow it in an aerogarden inside and have tons more than I can use. I freeze the excess. Also bought a mix to make pesto with. Never done that.

Rita, did you direct seed your basil outdoors, or start inside? I always start mine under the lights, then transplant it out -- and have always had lots of plants come up, without doing anything special at all. Maybe you just got some bad seed or something? Basil is very sensitive to cold, though -- and I don't plant it until a bit later than most things, since it grows fast and I want it available when the tomatoes are ripe.

I've planted about 40 tomato plants. May plant more if I notice any openings in my wildflower garden. At my usual top production date of 2 tomatoes per plant on 10% of the plants, I should get at least 8 tomatoes. Let's see, 100 hours of work, $1000 of equipment, and who know what else, if I take them to farmers market, I will charge $250.00 a tomato.

I started my pepper seeds today, inside of course, we are supposed to get some snow on Monday. I'll start the tomatoes in a few weeks.

At this stage, all the early spring plantings have emerged. beets, spinach, pak choi, radishes. Early English peas are blooming, second planting a couple of inches tall, onions have started to grow. Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Head lettuce in the cold frames about ready for transplant. Tomato, pepper and eggplant seedling have all emerged and will be ready for tranplant in mid April.

Weedwhacker said:Rita, did you direct seed your basil outdoors, or start inside? I always start mine under the lights, then transplant it out -- and have always had lots of plants come up, without doing anything special at all. Maybe you just got some bad seed or something? Basil is very sensitive to cold, though -- and I don't plant it until a bit later than most things, since it grows fast and I want it available when the tomatoes are ripe.

I did direct seed outdoors. I thought it was plenty warm as I had already planted out my tomato plants but what do I know as I had never tried to seed basil before.

I don't think I am going to try again as nothing at all grew. So I am planning on just buying plants again this spring.

I remember you planted your tomato plants really early last year though? For what you use of basil it's just as easy to buy plants.

I'd better start some more seeds tomorrow though. I do the cinnamon, clove, anise as well as the regular sweet basil. I use the fragrant ones in my flowers bouquets as filler. Wonderful fragrance!

@farmerdill, I am actually almost keeping up with you! My peas were planted the earliest I have ever planted them, last week in Feb. but they are only about 1" tall, no blossoms! Otherwise all my cool weather crops are doing well. The beets and carrots really jumped since last weekend and I actually pulled a small radish and ate it today! It looks like I will have some leaf lettuce in two weeks for the first day of market, but that's about all I will have. Oh, I will sell some of my tomato plants too.

Today I planted beans. Provider can tolerate the cold better but since our soil is pretty warm already I took a chance and planted some wax beans and my favorite Jade II beans. I also planted my gladiolus I had to lift last fall because we had to plow under a large part of the garden. I have a new pack that I will plant in a couple of weeks to try and keep the harvest a bit longer.

I was weeding my onions and there are a lot of bare spots. The ones that survived the cold the best are the Red Creoles. But I planted over 500 sets so I'll still have enough. And I will have green onions as well.

Abhege. My onions came through looking pretty ragged, but I only lost a few. Miss Megan and Desert Sunrise. no difference in survival rates. I plant Willet Wonders around Thanksgiving, they over wintered pretty well and are the ones now blooming. Sabre and Green Arrow( February planting) are just getting going. Radishes are are up, but it will be about three weeks before any harvest.

Yes, I planted out my tomatoes on April 26th which is ridiculously early for us here. Tomatoes were fine. But it is true, I don't need much basil even though I was cutting and giving to some friends and neighbors.

@farmerdill, I haven't been able to get my hands on Willet Wonders yet but I am planning on it. That's great if you can over winter them! I got my onion sets from Dixondale through a coop with our garden club. Where do you get your sets? I planted a yellow granex, I think Texas Giant and Red Creole. I am doing several peas, Oregon Giant that I pre-sprouted, Sweet Horizon which I've never done before, and for the life of me I cannot remember the others. Maybe Sugar Daddy and some dwarf that I planted in a pot. Snow/sugar and shelling peas this year.

I grow onions from seed , start in early September, transplant in December. Over wintering works great for smooth seeded peas like Willet Wonder or Early Alaska. Too many losses with wrinkled seeded varieties. Just for information, sets are dormant long day varieties, that are not good for any more than green onions here. Most big box stores will have little bags of them. Most of us whether we grow them ourselves or order from some place like Dixondale, Brown's Omaha etc use live plants.

This is my first year trying to grow anything here in FL. And all plants here will be in Earthboxes or other containers. So far I have tomatoes, peppers, green beans, cucumbers, cantaloupe, okra and zucchini in Earthboxes. The tomatoes are blooming like mad and will need to be tied soon. I finished harvesting the last of the broccoli last week and have 2 heads of cauliflower left. Several herbs and lettuce are in other containers so all in all I'm happy with everything so far. I have no idea what to expect other than I'm sure it will be a lot different than gardening in Indiana

Love the Earth Boxes! Mary, take some pictures. Yep, lots different than gardening in Indiana.

@farmerdill, I thought about growing onions from seed. I'll look for a short day variety. I did try once before but I planted them way too late. I'm fairly new to onions. Never had any luck with them before. I only learned about the differences a few years ago. Yes, it was live plants, not sets from Dixondale. I have purple sprouting broccoli I planted last fall. First time for that too. We'll see how it does. It looks really good so far.

I planted sugar snap peas, nasturtiums and the first round of leaf lettuce yesterday.

Happy, happy, happy...it looks like every piece of the garlic I planted last fall is alive and well!! I'm so tickled! This was my very first try, and with a ton of help from the folks here at ATP it looks a whole lot like success!

Thanks again for all of the help!

farmerdill said:I Just for information, sets are dormant long day varieties, that are not good for any more than green onions here. Most big box stores will have little bags of them.

That's very interesting... so they sell long-day onion sets in the south? That would seem to me to be quite deceptive and frustrating to inexperienced gardeners!

I had the "brilliant" idea last year to buy extra sets in the spring and keep them in my fridge to plant later in the season... dutifully planted and watched them grow, and then realized they would never bulb up in the fall because our days had become too short. They did make very nice green onions, though!! For my "main crop" of onions, I now start my own plants from seed... not really hard to do, and so many varieties to choose from! (And quite amazing how those little seedlings turn into nice big onions...)