Yes, broccoli should be forming heads, but what caught my attention is that the plants have all shot up so tall it appears that they're going to bolt. I shouldn't have included broccoli on the list. However, the cabbage isn't showing any signs of head producing, just tall plants. The swiss chard is beautiful in it's tall crooked way, but so different than before. There are at least 6" between leaves and the stem leans this way & that. I'm sure I picked outer leaves from the young plants because I usually harvest this & that as soon as possible for the table. The plants are so bizarre looking that a friend thought I had a new vegetable type growing. These were direct sown Feb.16 in SFG. Perhaps, it is all just because of the cool wet giving more growth early on. Anyone know what's going on?

Well, that's nice to hear >lolI feel so much better now. Does that happen often, having such cool summers, I mean at night? It does feel good though, much better then the humid hot nights in the south. We live in the PNW for only 3 years so still trying to figure out when to put things in the ground and how things grow here. Our first year was great. We even had a lot of Eggplants, right outside. Everyyear I had tons of tomatoes and Beans. Just not this year. I bought this great Vegetable Book from Steve Solomon 'growing vegetables west of the cascades', I can recommend it, so much info. So I am trying to follow his advice. But I didn't get my Tomatoes in quick enough. First we were gone, then it was too cool, so I waited to put them in the ground. I think it was almost June before they were in. So, guess thats one of the reason. I only grow Pole Beans, I got these nice green and yellow Haricot Verts from Renee's Garden. And some purple ones, flat podded ones. Both produced tons of Beans last year. My Carrots grow good now, because we moved our Vegetable garden to a new area, which was on the downhill side. Too get a flat garden area, my dh put retaining walls in and then filled them in. So right by the wall the ground is really nice, loose and deep. Great for Carrots. Last year the carrots didn't grow that great. I think the compost and gardendirt we got from Lane Forest product wasn't composted that great and had too much nitrogen. Carrots don't like too much nitrogen, they get real hairy roots and to much top growth. They didn't taste great either. My peas I did start somewhat late this year, around Beginning of April, I think when it is too wet, they rot. If we wouldn't had the heatwave and a secret garden helper (nobody will admit it >lolMy best success this year are my Blackberries. I probably already got 15 kg from them. (I am German, that's the reason for kg instead pd), I got lot's of them in the freezer and made some jam with Blackberries, coriander, rosemary (just infused the fruit with it) and Blackberry liquer. Yumm. I also baked a few cakes with them. They must like cool summers, those Blackberries. Isabell

Start seeds indoors in late Feb or early March. Put them outside when it warms up. tampahydro is right about some taking longer. Habs can take up to a month to germinate. I've heard chile tepin can take 90 days, but have also heard otherwise. Remember you can keep vegetative growth going with flourescent (spelling?) lights but it won't help fruiting. But if it's all seedling all the growth is going to be vegetative regardless. As far as plants go peppers are pretty fast growers. Try growing coast redwood from seeds. Ouch. -HabBob

What I plan to use is Miracle Gro Garden Soil for Flowers and Vegetables, as I have heard that the generic bags of top soil can be from anywhere, including what was scraped up from the wreckage of New Orleans after Katrina. If you go that route be sure to get the product designed for in ground use. There is another one to be used for containers. I've also added compost whenever replanting a square. Not familiar with the E.B.Stone product, but usually Lowe's has a few different kinds of compost on sale, and we have composted horse manure and leaf mold here, giving us a lot of variety. Another thought I had about this water drainage issue is that we went to great trouble not to mention expense, to use vermiculite when we established the beds. I've read where many people can't find it and so modify the mix to some extent. I wonder if actually having 1/3 of the soil in vermiculite might be contributing to the upper range dry soil problem in that it only facilitates the drainage of the soil (if I understand its use correctly, eg, to lighten the soil). Whatever, in my garden most of the moisture is ending up in the bottom of the square even with daily strong rains. I don't see how adding some *good* top soil can't do anything but help. But I've been wrong before! :-) Last but not least, a soil test should give us a non-guesswork idea of what might be off with the bed contents.