I think it rather depends what you are going for. If you are looking for the best blooms for cutting you want good strong plants, and they need rich soil, training and plenty of space. If you just want a pretty climber they could be closer but personally I think they need more than 3 inches. To keep them blooming they need rigorous dead heading. You could thin them and transplant the thinnnings. You don't have to sacrifice any plants.

olya forgot the obligatory riumochka of vodka that usually follows the bite of radish... reading this is kinda funny 'cause i was just munching on some radishes wonder WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH ALL THESE RADISHES???? and silvia gave me some ideas. in one of my north african cookbooks, the author mentions that in tunisia they use radishes interchangeably with turnips... now if i can only figure out what to do with all the turnips i have so i can start using my radishes as turnips... anyway, i planted hybrid radishes for the first time this year and i am totally sold. for a few cents more, no splitting and better flavor.

Thawk, You have radishes and beets up already? That is awesome. When did you plant them? Maude, We have 5 big gardens (not enough LOL) so hand spading is out of the question. Besides hubby dearly loves getting out there with his tractor and plow/disk. Actually had an extension agent tell us that we wouldn't have much trouble with - oh, what is the name of that stuff tomatoes got so bad last year, wilt?, - staying in the ground because we fall plow. There is something to it, as he was also surprised that we could raise canteloupe. Good rotation practices and fall plowing must be the keys. You are so right about the hard pan. Brother in law had a farmer come in and chisel-plow his garden spot. We don't seem to have much trouble, rarely ever water anything either. Need to get to Chamness in Eddyville and get some more of their inexpensive compost. Black Gold :) Do you have a heat source in your greenhouse? Hubby is in the process of building one, 6'x8'. And please tell me more about growing sweet potatoes...I have developed a taste for them, but have never grown them. Do they get planted in early spring too? SOS

Busy1, I control aphids by releasing lady bugs. Well, I guess I should say I release lady bugs and they control the aphids. I had to release $5.00 or $6.00 worth of lady bugs three years in a row to get a self-sustaining population going. Since then, I seldom see a single aphid all year long. I have better luck with spring broccoli than fall broccoli but better luck with fall brussels sprouts than spring-planted ones. Like Dorothy, I am very careful with the timing of the planting, watching temperatures carefully to avoid the low temps that give you buttoning of the heads, and I don't expect mine to go beyond May, so I use varieties that are fast-maturing. My biggest threat, other than the weather, is the deer. We have a taller fence this year, so I am hoping that will keep the deer out of the garden. Because of the high winds and the temperatures in the 80s and 90s, I've been holding my cool season crops inside waiting for cooler weather to return. Even the few hours a day that the broc plants are outside hardening off are hard on them....they do not like these blast furnace winds. We're going to be about 85 degrees today with winds in the 20s/30s, but then I believe cooler temperatures return and we'll be back in the 30s at night by about Thursday. It's about time! As nice as the warm weather is, this kind of heat this early in the season is not good for the cool-season crops. The tomatoes, of course, are loving it. George, I have concluded there never is enough time in the spring no matter what I do. I had a very ambitious list of "things to do" today, but then the fire pagers went off several times during the night and I got almost no sleep, so I am a zombie today and my "to do" list may slide until tomorrow. I hope you'll let us know how the peas do for you. Maybe, if you like them and save some seed, the saved seed will come true (more or less) for you. You never know until you try. Dorothy, I like Early Dividend, but I tried Premium Crop this year instead. I've also had really good yields from Small Miracle, which can be planted very intensively since the plants are so small. I'm glad you're trying some other tomatoes. When I began breaking out of my rut and trying new ones, which was about the mid-1990s, I was astonished at the variety of colors, sizes, shapes, and especially flavors that existed in the tomato world. In the summer, it it not unusual for me to have a salad with pink, green, red, yellow, orange and black cherry tomtoes. Then, when we're ina restaurant and the salad arrives with "only" red tomatoes, it seems like something is wrong. Last year, I thought I dehydrated a lot of cherry, grape, and currant tomatoes and that they'd get me through the winter. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, except once I would open a zip-lock quart bag of them, I couldn't stop eating them until they were all gone. We had the last bag last week, and I hate knowing there's no more left in the freezer. This year, I need to dehydrate ten times as many so they'll last longer. Consequently, I am going to plant a ton of cherry, grape and currant types so I'll have lots for drying. I'm not even going to complain about having to water them constantly in the absence of rainfall.....because the flavor of dehydrated/rehydrated tomatoes in the winter is so good that it will be worth the higher water bills just to have them to eat all winter long. Dawn