re: 2026 Spring Garden Thread

You need to put it in 5 gal bucket with water and let it soak overnight. It gets hydrophobic once it dries out. Or just get a block of coco coir.

This is our first attempt, but I bought some Miracle Grow Starter soil. The tomatoes my wife planted about a week ago are getting close to an inch tall.

At what point should she transplant these to a 3" cup?

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At what point should she transplant these to a 3" cup?

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quicker than you think. every time I seed start I end up with tomato roots all over the place because i didnt upsize fast enough.

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I’ll have a whole 8x24 bed left which I’ll probably just plant in sunflowers and zinnias

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I ordered a bunch of sunflower seeds earlier this week. Doing the same in a few of my boxes.

I just used black oil sunflower seed (bird seed). It sprouts pretty well and makes a nice flower. I buried them so hopefully the squirrels don’t find them first.

done planting I’m whooped



Everybody got a scoop of rotted manure. It’s been covered for a couple of years and is really nice now. When I first got it I spread some green which is why I have so many weeds in the beds now

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When I first got it I spread some green which is why I have so many weeds in the beds now

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We bought our land from a couple that had horses. They had a pile behind the barn where they dumped what they cleaned out of the stalls. Being the agricultural Mensa I was, I decided to strip the grass off the top of that pile and use that in our first year of our garden. Horrific mistake. It’s taken me 4 years to rid the garden of the weed impact from that.

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At what point should she transplant these to a 3" cup?

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Give them about another inch. They will get "leggy" before you know it unless you have them under a light. Putting my seedlings on a seed heater and close under a light were game changers for me (since I don't have a greenhouse [yet].

Thanks for the tips on the starter soil guys. I guess I was just being lazy. I'll order some of the coconut stuff and mix with miracle gro starter, a little regular topsoil and some perlite and do it right.

Planted tomatoes and peppers today, decided to start with 3in pots instead of trays this year.

this long steady rain today is glorious, for once I was able to time a bunch of planting the day before a good rain. It makes a huge difference to have the beds and ground saturated at the beginning of the

Here’s a few pix of stuff waking up. I’m super happy with the bare root seedling trees I got from whitetail hill nursery in Alabama. 100% sprouting success. The crabapples in particular are vigorous, these have only been in the ground a couple weeks



peach, pear and fig







possibly my favorite perennial, Ohio spiderwort. Flowers all summer and spreads in clumps so you can dig and relocate everywhere you want. Great plant



this is leaf tea, I water the vegetables with it once or twice a week till they get going good. It promotes deep root growth and adds beneficial microbes to the soil. Easy and free



Fill up a garbage can with dead leaves and pack it down good, fill with water and wait a year

It's looking like Bonnie Plants decided not to do poblano peppers this year. None at:
Petrus
Lowe's
Home Depot
Fads and Frames
Walmart
Sutherland's.