So, I will soon be ready to start a new year after a disastrous last year. I built a couple of boxes in the hopes they will be happier.
A couple of questions,,
Is it true to NOT use styrofoam as a filler in the pots..True?
Here in NashvilleTennessee, when should I plant my first store bought plants? Cucumbers and Tomatoes
As far as bugs can you all recommend bug control spray?

Here's my new pots... Thanks All!

I sowed 12 seeds of Green Armenian cucumber today, I hope some will come up. The last batch disappeared somehow.

Styrofoam? I would think a good potting soil should have the varied ingredients proportioned properly. Buy the potting soil in "bales". Pro-Mix (if you can find it) is a very good soil, but there are others. Going to a dedicated gardening center, rather than a "department" at a big box store like Home Depot or Walmart, might be a good idea. These gardening centers usually stock and sale what they use themselves...and they want something that is good.

Nice looking planters. Are you on rocky ground? Be sure the planters can drain sufficiently and that you can water them easily. What type of wood did you build them out of?

Bug spray for cucumbers and tomatoes? I don't think I would worry too terribly much about spraying for bugs.

For tomatoes you may get some tomato hornworms (hummingbird moths) and other types of caterpillars. You may also get stink-bugs or leaf-footed bugs stinging your tomatoes. The problem with these insects are that they will arrive via wings. The caterpillars you *can* treat with some type of biological control such as Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is a caterpillar-specific treatment or Spinosad which controls caterpillars and a few other critters. Or you can do nothing but pick the critters off and toss them in the yard for the birds to eat. The stinkbug/leaf-footed bugs are a bit more difficult...if you find a solution to them let me know!

A bigger problem that you may encounter is disease, virus, or fungi. For these you need to use a spray regimen of a copper-based fungicide. Something like Bonide Copper Fungicide. Buy the concentrate and mix it up in a pump-up sprayer...don't buy the little pump bottle as it is expensive! Another spray is Serenade...it handles *some* virus and disease, along with fungus. Baseline is to use the copper.

Fungus and disease will be (I think) a larger problem than bugs.

Planting time... Wow! I just killed some time on the University of Tennessee's and *finally* found a gardening sub-page. Here is the link: https://www.uthort.com/categor... Scroll down and you'll see a link to a "gardening calendar" or you can use this link to go directly to the calendar: https://extension.tennessee.ed...

Best wishes,
Ed

Thank you so much ED. Thats some great info! My planters are made with cedar and pine. I asked one of the old timers here in Franklin TN and he said I always plant on Tax Day. That was his rule. Looks like I still have a month. The Old Timer also mentioned squirrels and rabbits which could be a nuisance. Thanks again!

-Pieter

Pieter - you are very fortunate to have an "old timer" there to ask for advice; there is nothing like having someone local who is willing to share their experience! (Which is not to say, however, that you should never try anything new or experiment with your own ideas... no matter how long we've been gardening, there is always something to learn

Really nice planters! And deep. I always wonder if the shallow looking ones in stores are deep enough to get a good root system going.

Up in your planters you shouldn't have to worry about rabbits, but squirrels might be another problem. Be sure and place the planters where they'll get as much sunshine as possible during the day and season. The sun angle will change during the summer and you don't won't to find your planters are suddenly in the shade most of the day.

April 15th is probably a fair approximation of your last freeze date. I'd probably wait another week or so...planting when soil is cold usually just causes the plants to sit there for a while. But, being as you've got the planters the soil will probably react (and fluctuate) more quickly to the ambient temperatures.

Btw, the month you mentioned will go by *very fast*!

Intheswamp said:Up in your planters you shouldn't have to worry about rabbits, but squirrels might be another problem. Be sure and place the planters where they'll get as much sunshine as possible during the day and season. The sun angle will change during the summer and you don't won't to find your planters are suddenly in the shade most of the day.

April 15th is probably a fair approximation of your last freeze date. I'd probably wait another week or so...planting when soil is cold usually just causes the plants to sit there for a while. But, being as you've got the planters the soil will probably react (and fluctuate) more quickly to the ambient temperatures.

Btw, the month you mentioned will go by *very fast*!

You're so right, the month is shooting by so quick. I build 15 carpenter bee traps in January and thought that was early...Wrong!

Sounds like you've been staying busy! Yes, those pesky carpenter bugs can be a very obnoxious!!! They're already around about here, too!

Time....just blink and it's zipped by you!

Carpenter bees are great pollinators so I am happy to have them nest in untreated pine lumber in sheds and barns. Most of my pollinators are solitaries, I also encourage bumble bees. Not many honey bees around, mostly feral ones that can get mean.

farmerdill said:Carpenter are great pollinators so I am happy to have them nest in untreated pine lumber in sheds and barns. Most of my pollinators are solitaries, I also encourage bumble bees. Not many honey bees around, mostly feral ones that can get mean.

Dillard, you should plant some Vitex negundo. I brought some back from an old beekeepers yard figuring my honey bees would love it (they were wrapping his up!). I planted some 1-2 foot tall saplings and now they're probably 10-12' tall and and an easy six feet across. Anyhow, I have never seen the likes of bumble bees, probably carpenter bees, and scads and scads of small solitary bees...greens, blues, blacks, etc.,. Only thing is the honey bees don't like it. Seriously, I never see any on the bushes. You get with 25' of the clump and you know there's bees there when it's blooming good...and it blooms a long time! Mine started out with a really sawtooth, narrow leaf...I was scared the drug task force wasn't gonna show up!!! But, oddly, over a few years the leaves acquired a smooth edge on lots of the limbs with sawtooth leaves just found here and there on the bushes. Really, though, it is a humdinger of a pollinator attraction...mines planted about 20' away from the garden.

Some honey bees, especially the Africanized, are terribly mean. The Africanized can be deadly. Conversely most of the European honey bees are somewhat gentle. I kept what was thought to be Caucasian bees, a dark bee that's early to rise and late to bed...good honey makers. They were orginally from the Caucus mountains, an area between Russia and Turkey. Very gentle bees...usually worked them gloveless. I have removed bees from where they didn't need to be in an old dairy and I wore bluejeans and t-shirt-and a veil and only got a few stings that afternoon. There again, I had a colony that stood guard just hankering for me to arrive...and they weren't in celebratory mood!!!!!!!!

Good, calm wild honey bees are getting harder and harder to find. They are gold, though, as they're adapted to survive whatever has killed off most of them...poisons, parasites, breeding competition, etc.,.

Unfortunately, I have an acre fenced in backyard for my dogs. It's amazing the damage that is done to my 4x4 posts that hold up the fence. So I need to put up all those bee traps. It does the trick. Carpenter bees are basically harmless other than all those holes they dig.....