Our Romas are doing excellent, beefsteaks & first ladys a little behind. Peppers also slow. Apples, plums, cherries all showing up. Planted garlic this year that is a first for us & it doing good so far. Aunty M flowers are nice but food is way better. Gotta admit though the lilacs, orchids & roses in crystal vases throughout the house do seem to make me think we are sophisticated - LOL.

Hey Snake, next year you need to plant a Momotaro tomato. Hands down one of the finest flavored toms there is.

I always plant a Glacier each year as it's always the first tom to produce fruit.

BWP, I am mostly into "scentual" gardening. Gardenia, jasmine, honeysuckle, lilac, hyacinths, lots of lillies, petunias, alyssum and a bunch of others. The idea is, when I'm sitting in the hot tub, I get water therapy and aromatherapy at the same time.

I've got lettuce, tomatoes, chard and some herbs in pots, and a large asparagus bed, a few rhubarb (doing better since I transplanted them) and some horseradish right now.

Sun golds are little gifts from heaven ,fantastic little mouth grenade

I've got the garden going a little. Here's the corn and rhubard. Romaine lettuce, cabbage, cilantro, peppers, and peas in my two raised beds. I've also got blueberries, beans, potatoes, and you can see the rasberries. Fruit is coming on strong, cherries, apples, peaches, plums. Lots of sun.

Compost. It will take awhile, like a few years, to develope a good soil.



I'm going off memory here, but the ratio should be in the neighborhood of 90% carbon (leaves, sawdust) and 10% nitrogen (grass clippings, greens, manure). One sign of going too hot on the nitrogen is a strong odor. Good compost will only have an earthy, dirt odor.

I've been adding compost to my flower beds for more than 10 years, and even after all that time, it still sucks. Why? Because I have sand, gravel and rocks to start with. I've got a sifter to remove most of the rocks and gravel, but there is very little stuff resembling soil left. Just sand. There were a few pockets of "topsoil" on the property, but they were located in densely treed areas that we left undisturbed. At the end of our road, there is an actual gravel pit.

It's much easier to build raised beds and haul in soil. We've even built raised beds for shrubs and small trees. Less work and they do much better.

Aunty, I agree, raised beds are the way to go. I've got six of them separated by gravel covered with indoor/outdoor carpet. No mess. No weeding.

Captain: Thanks for the info on the Momotaro, I'll look for it. It's tough enough finding Glacier starts.