I set up a new bed for vegetables along a fence.  

Things I can sow directly in the ground, like beans or squash or cucumbers seem to do okay. I usually buy tomato and pepper plants.

If you find a tomato/cuke/zucchini plant you truly love..it is very easy to save the seeds...and I DO. Basically because there is so much manipulation of seeds by Monsato & Monrovia nowadays, that we are not able save them. They have manipulated the genes so that we CANNOT save them...as they are generically modified so they do not reproduce. I owned the very first Nursery on this small Island that I live on...and lived thru a lot of influence(interference) by these companies...If you wish to PM me, I can/will share this info! Cheers!

I may go ahead and plant them on Friday this week. Our night time temperatures look like they will definitely be warming up from then on. Before then we have a couple of nights in the forties, and I know the soil will not have had a chance to warm up.

I have a compost bin, and have used compost periodically. I can also get it from the transfer station (dump) because they compost the yard waste and give it away free. I put all my peels and stuff in the compost, it keeps the trash from smelling so much. Banana peels I have heard make excellent fertilizer for tomatoes.

I am so looking forward to home grown tomatoes. Hubby wants me to make my pepper jelly and sell it. He sold a jar at work this summer.

Probably the bed I have done will qualify more as square foot gardening or intensive gardening. It is at a height that I can sit on a bench to work it, if I choose. It is up against my neighbor's new fence, but I built a cinder block wall and filled it with peat moss, soil and compost. I think I have a book on square foot gardening. I am hard pressed to find space in my yard that gets enough sun. This bed is one and a half feet wide and twenty five feet long. I like that I can work the whole thing but not walk on and compress the soil. I have tried using milk jugs, but I bet the 2 liters will work better. I have also used a catch bucket for water in the shower. I will put a soaker hose in this new bed.

Is the corn in pots or outdoors? If it is outdoors the ground may still be too cold, or critters may have stolen the seeds. Peas should be great just straight in the ground as they prefer cooler weather and in my neck of the woods they die around mid June if not sooner. If your corn and beans are in peat pots, make sure they are getting some warmth. You can even put them on a tray on top of the refrigerator to stimulate bottom root growth.

You probably planted them a bit early, Dragon, if your pots are outside (which is the only way I can figure them possibly being stolen like Gerty suggested). You're in Ohio, like me, and typically...unless your plant is a cold-loving thing, you don't put it outside before the "last frost date" -- which is mid-May here (sucks I know, but at least Corn doesn't take a long time like most other things, which alot of us generally start indoors March-April so they're a decent size before we put them outside, like tomatoes). Sorry if I'm going on here, I'm a bit of a worry wort ^_^'

Corn is a kind of grass and actually, it adores heat. ^_^' Hopefully they'll still be okay after being in the cold...they SHOULD be, I'd think, but I'm not sure, if they have been in the cold, at all, of course.

If you did it inside, then they might be old or bad seeds, where did you buy them from? Also, I'm curious about your ideas, since I'm a bit surprised at the idea that you started them in peat, rather than putting them directly in the ground after the frost date. I'm not saying it's bad or anything, I just never heard of anyone doing it, 'cause most people're terrified of disturbing the roots and upsetting the new plants too much so that they die -- which I think may be a bit unfounded, considering they said the same thing about sunflowers, and we started those inside this year!

To me it seemed normal as I have another friend online in Minnesota that starts them in pots indoors. I meant if dragon put the corn in the ground the critters might have stolen it. I used to have an old egg incubator and I would put trays of plants on it to get bottom heat to get them growing. I have been trying to tell daughter in law she is rushing the season even here. Most stuff does not want to go out before the first week of May. Exceptions here would be peas, lettuce, radishes and spinach, which all like the cold.

xParanoiax, my idea was to start them inside and plant them as soon as the ground was warm enough. Then I'd plant more, stagger the harvest times so I'll have vegetables all summer through maybe October or so. The peat pots can be put directly in the soil when it's warm enough. I bought the seeds from Walmart, wrong move?

Gerty, I'm growing them inside and as soon as the soil is warm enough I'll put the pots in the ground and they'll grow as the pots dissolve. My idea was to stagger my harvests to have vegetables till late fall.

Strange about the corn, I remember it sprouting quicker for my Grandpa.

I think i have the same friend here that starts corn indoors in minnesota!

Probably you do have the same friend. Dragon, that should work. We started all kinds of seeds inside for third grade science projects, and they did grow, most of them. It could be that you buried the corn too deep. Go ahead and try the bottom heat thing, I bet it will help.

I like the ribbon idea and I may have to remember the toilet paper rolls for next year, or even later this year to start some other plants. If you have a problem with deer you are supposed to hand bars of Irish Spring soap. That is what a nearby nature center does with the baby trees it starts.

OOOH that soap i can see how it would keep the deer away..i hate the smell of that soap too! Good to know maybe it keeps cows away too?

It might keep a lot of things away. I am not sure about cows. It might keep bugs away, though. Does anything keep cows away?

Hmmm..selling them sends them away!

Yep, granddaddy used to send them away to be steaks.

MMMM steak!

My dad's selling the fence jumpers this week. He brought me all the nice cows that he wants to keep...the ones that are well pets almost. I've got 15 mommas and 15 babies and 2 bulls here now.

That is when you have to pick things that have short maturities. Like I got mostly Early Girl tomatoes, as they are supposed to be ready in fifty days. I will put epsom salts in the soil for them, too.

I will have to try that myself. Thanks

I had a neighbor that did not like vegetables, but thought that raising grass was a waste of time. He grew vegetables and sold them inexpensively, and collected all the geraniums he could in the fall and sold plants from the cuttings the next spring. In one of the responses someone talked about using toilet paper rolls for seed starting, and I think that would be a great alternative to peat pots and they decompose.I get plenty of those.

That's a brilliant idea! If we didn't give the cardboard toilet paper rolls to our rabbit for chewing I think we'd do that.

When I had a rabbit I gave him maple tree twigs.