As to the original question, I agree with several other posters - there are certainly a lot of good tomato varieties out there, probably more than one person could grow in a lifetime. To narrow the search, it would be helpful to know the intended purpose. Cherry? Slicer? Paste? Eaten raw, cooked, or canned? With nothing more to go on, we are indeed (as another poster stated) just preaching to the choir. Short Canadian seasons would certainly limit the choices; but started early enough, and given protection at both ends of the season, many varieties should mature successfully. My best recommendation would be to start with varieties that have demonstrated their ability to produce in Canada. To that end, Canada's own heirloom seed organization, Seeds of Diversity Canada, could be of great help. I have grown a Canadian paste variety, "Quebec 1121", that performed exceptionally well for me in Wisconsin. Here is a link that might be useful: Seeds of Diversity Canada

Crystalshoe- Hydrology, not the size of the bed or container, determines whether you're growing in a raised bed (RB) or a container, and by extension, what type of soil you can/should use. A planting of daisies in a plastic or clay pot resting on your deck or patio is a container planting. Bury that pot an inch or two into the ground so there is continuity between the medium in the pot and the soil the pot is partially buried in, and it becomes a RB - no matter what size the pot is. The difference is, the earth will act as a giant wick, and remove water that would normally perch in a conventional container planting, but water movement within the partially buried container would closely mimic water movement in the earth or in the soil below. There is a caveat, however. The area where the pot is buried or partially buried would need to drain properly for things to work. If you were to bury the pot in clay soil that allowed essentially no percolation, the pot would simply fill up with water at every rainfall or irrigating. If you're building a RB over a clay soil that drains poorly - don't amend the clay unless you can drain the area. If you do, water will percolate or run into the area you amended, leaving it saturated for extended periods (the bathtub effect). You can remedy this problem if you are able to cut trenches or use a French drain cut into the clay to drain excess water to a lower area away from where you're growing. Not amending the clay below your beds also allows any excess water in the RB soil to move laterally over the surface of the clay where it can evaporate. If you amend, the water won't move laterally until the amended depression is entirely saturated with water. No matter how you look at it, you're eventually going to have problems with a RB over clay unless you can figure a way to use gravity or a pump to move water from the area. As soil life moves through the clay and increases the OM content of the clay below the RBs, that soil will become more porous than the surrounding clay. The pores will quickly fill with water when it rains or when you irrigate unless you have a plan to remove the water. The end game is, the water that collects below your RBs has to have a place to go. It has to drain naturally in a reasonable time, or be directed downhill or to a sump where it can be mechanically removed. Amending the soil beneath RBs just forces you to face the brunt of the problem sooner (in heavy clay soils). BTW - you don't need to use a highly aerated soil like that you referred to in your OP in RBs. In fact, the highly aerated soils that perform so well in containers are probably not a particularly good choice for RBs because they have a steep water retention curve that will have you watering more than you'd prefer. Keep in mind that the time you spend now, properly preparing, will save a lot of time and frustration later. How many beds? Size/depth? Budget constraints high, low, medium? Ready access to materials you think might work? Al

Carla, CARROTS: Carrots are NOTORIOUSLY SLOW and can take a month or longer to sprout. We plant them in the cool spring months, but they germinate fastest in hot weather (wouldn't you know it!) I love carrots, but they are frustrating to get started. One of the main problems with carrots is that they sprout so slowly that gardeners tend to forget about them and let the soil dry out....and then the carrots never sprout. Here's a couple of the 'old farmer's ways' to sprout carrots: 1. Prepare your soil and sow your seed as directed on the seed packet. Water the bed gently so the seed doesn't wash away. Then, lay a board or a piece of heavy duty black plastic or cardboard on top of the area sown with carrot seed. This will conserve moisture and keep the soil from crusting over and becoming too hard for the carrots to break through. Check underneath the board every morning and every evening, and remove the board the minute you see even one tiny green sprout. I've used this approach and it works pretty well. 2. Buy a packet or two of radish seeds. Plant your carrot seeds, but interplant them with the radish seeds by placing a radish seed every inch or two in the row OR by sowing a row of radishes VERY CLOSE (maybe 1/2" away) to the row or rows of carrots. Now, why in the world would you want to do this? Most soil surfaces dry out and crust over very soon after the seeds are planted, and those teensy carrot plants aren't strong enough to break through the surface of the soil. Radishes, on the other hand, sprout quickly and with those great big leaves. As the radishes sprout, they break through that crusty soil layer, paving the way for the carrots. Because radishes mature very quickly, you will harvest them quickly, and they won't be there to interfere with the growth of the carrots in the long-term. You will have a lot of radishes all at once, but they store really well, or you can just give them away or throw them on the compost pile. And, if you have kids who enjoy gardening with you, the radishes are great for the kids to grow because you get such fast results....from seed to an edible vegetable in about a month. Now, here's the Okie-Dawn Carrot Planting Method for Control-Freak Gardeners Who Must Have Their Carrots "Just So". Don't laugh at this. It works. I've done it twice, but I don't usually do it. It was the result of not getting a good stand of carrots for several years. 1. Save all the cardboard tubes from your rolls of toilet paper, paper towels, wrapping paper, etc. 2. When you are ready to sow your seed, cut all the bigger tubes down to the same height as the toilet paper tubes. Line up the tubes upright in a seed starting tray or plastic storage bin. Fill with soil. Water to settle the soil. 3. Plant 3 or 4 carrot seeds per tube. Lightly cover with fine potting soil or compost and water gently. Keep inside in house or shed or garage. Carrot seed will sprout at 40 degrees, but will sprout quickest inside at normal room temperatures. Keep moist until seeds sprout. If necessary, cover box with chicken wire or something similar so that cats won't think it is a litter box. 4. After the plants are an inch or two tall, thin to where you have two plants per tube. 5. Transplant tubes to garden, setting the tubes about an inch apart. Water well. When carrots are a couple of inches tall, thin to one carrot per tube. The cardboard tubes will rot. The seeds will grow. You WILL have carrots. OKRA: This is a true heat lover. I usually plant mine in May, or maybe in April if the soil is REALLY warm. Okra germinates best when soil temperatures are in the 75 to 90 degree range. In most of Oklahoma right now the soil temps are in the 60s. At our place they are consistently in the 63 to 67 degree range, so it is still a little early. If your soil was lower than 68 degrees when you planted your okra, you can expect very poor if any germination. Sorry. I find that okra is a very erratic germinator, even under what seems to be 'just perfect' conditions. Even if the soil is warm enough and you are careful to ensure that is is moist enough, you still will have erratic germination beginning about a week after you plant and then lasting 1 or 2 weeks. Sometimes it seems like the okra germination drags on and on at an excrutiating pace. You may have to replant after the soil warms up a bit. To plant Okra: Use your hoe or a stick or your hand to create a furrow in the center of what will be your row or rows of okra. If the soil feels dry, use a watering can or a hose set at a very low watering rate to apply some water directly to that furrow. Let that water soak in for a few minutes before you plant. Sow your seed at the rate of 4 or 5 seed per foot of row. Cover the seed with dirt 1/2" to 3/4" deep and lightly tamp down the soil. This ensures good seed-to-soil contact, which is important, and also keeps the soil from drying out as quickly. Once your seedlings emerge, you'll need to thin them out. I like to thin out my okra the first time when it is about 2" tall. At that point I thin the plants out to about 6" to 8" apart. After the plants have grown to be about 6" to 8" tall, thin them out again, to a spacing of about 12" to 18" apart, depending on the eventual size of your plant. For a dwarf okra, like Little Lucy or Bubba, I'll leave them a foot apart. For a larger okra, I'll leave them 18" apart (and sometimes 24" apart if they are one of the ones that get REALLY big). Each time after you thin out the plants, pat down the disturbed soil and water lightly. Okra is one of the few plants that I do not mulch extremely early on in the growing process. Okra likes it hot, and mulch cools the soil, so I don't mulch the okra until the soil is well up into the 70s. BEETS: I don't grow beets, but I know a little about them because my granny always grew them, and I grow Swiss Chard which is a relative of theirs. Beets are a cool season crop. You can plant them as early as 4 to 6 weeks BEFORE the date of your average last frost. Beets love soil that has been improved by adding liberal amounts of compost and other organic matter, but avoid adding manure in the weeks just before you plant the beets. High levels of manure cause beets to develop tough, coarse, misshapen roots. It is OK to add manure in the fall and then plant beets in the spring. Sow beets in furrows as described above for okra. Sow about 8 to 10 seeds per foot of row, covering with no more than 1/2" of soil, unless you have a nice sandy loam, and then you can cover them with up to 1" of soil. It is hard to get a good stand of beets. To speed up seed germination, you can soak your beet seed in room temperature water overnight immediately before planting it. Also, if your soil tends to crust over and get hard a couple of days after planting, then cover the seed with compost after planting, instead of with regular garden soil. You can also pre-soak okra seed in this manner. Beet seeds will germinate when the soil is between 45 and 85 degrees. As always, germination is faster with the warmest temperatures. So, in the springtime the beets may take 2 to 3 weeks to sprout, and if you are planting in late summer for a fall crop they may sprout in 4 to 6 days. If it helps to know this, one of my neighbors, who is in his second year of vegetable gardening, planted his beets three weeks ago, and they finally began to emerge two weeks after he planted. He has unimproved clay soil so he has been watering lightly every day to keep the soil soft enough for the seedlings to emerge. SUMMER SQUASH: All squashes are extremely sensitive to cool soil temps AND to cool air temps. If planted too early, they will grow very slowly and will be of low productivity. If you planted when your soil temperatures were at least 60 degrees, they should be fine. If you planted when the soil was colder than that, they may not sprout and, even in they do sprout, they may not do well. Plant squash once the soil temperature exceeds 60 degrees and only after daytime high temps consistently exceed 65 degrees. For bush types, plant 3 or 4 seeds together every 24 to 36 inches. For vine types, space the hill of 3 to 4 seeds every 36" to 40". Plant seeds at a depth of 1" to 2", planting deeper on lighter sandier soils and planting higher on heavier clay soils. If the soil and air temps are at the right level, you should see seedlings emerge in a week or less. Once the seedlings have developed two to four true leaves, thin each hill to one or two seedlings. Because of the extensive root system of squash plants, it is better in this case to thin by pinching off the stem at ground level instead of pulling up the young plant. As with okra, squash likes warm soil, so I don't mulch it for the first few weeks. Since it rained and is now quite warm, I think some of your sluggish seeds should emerge this week. If not, you may need to think about re-planting. Before you decide to replant, though, you can take a hand-held trowel or cultivator and gently scratch around in the rows where you planted seeds that haven't emerged. See if you see any tiny bits of emerging green leaves or roots. If you see some, you might want to wait a few more days before replanting. However, due to the amount of rain that fell, and because you have seed in the ground that hasn't sprouted, there is always the possibility that the seed is so wet it will rot instead of germinating. Keep me posted on how it goes. Dawn

*digs up old thread* Well, I've finally gotten up the nerve to try composting, and thought I'd share my experience here. It's only my second week, but so far, so good. I called several local nurseries, and found a kitchen compost bin for under a hundred dollars. I could've gotten one from the Gardens at Spring Creek (Fort Collins' community garden) last year for about half the cost, but when I called to ask if they still had them, I was informed they were sold out due to high demand. For a while I'd contemplated making my own out of a Rubbermaid trash can, but after pricing these I figured I might as well cough up an additional $30 and have a tidier, more ergonomical bin. So I hefted my new purchase home and opened up the box. This was what was inside: It also came with a booklet with instructions in English, Spanish, and French. (It turns out that the "Garden Gourmet" is surpisingly not manufactured in China but Ontario, Canada) The recycled plastic pieces snapped together easily -- once they were flattened out a little -- and didn't require any special tools. It's much smaller than a traditional compost pile, but is designed to hold about 11 cubit feet, which is currently plenty for my small-scale gardening efforts. So far I've put in partially decomposed leaves, fruit and vegetable scraps, houseplant trimmings, seaweed, bread crumbs, tea leaves and coffee grounds, and I've been sure to poke at it every couple of days or so. I'm amazed at how quickly things are already decomposing, and how little it smells. (Of course I may change this opinion when the heat of summer arrives!) I've also been tossing in about a pint of water a day, because our climate is so dry and windy. This, along with one inch piece limits and regular aeration, is said to be key with small upright compost bins. Hopefully in about six months to a year I'll have my very own compost -- or at the very least, an interesting learning experience.