Here's how I do my Bsprouts for example: The variety of Bsprouts I grow take 120 days to begin to mature, and I need about a month to get the full harvest from my plants and they taste better when they have been exposed to some light frost. So I count backward from our typical first frost (Oct 31 in my area) 120 days. (I will need to cover them with row covers towards the end of harvest if we have a chance of a freeze). So I figure I need to have my transplants ready to go in the garden around July 1 (120 days from July 1 to Oct 31). I know that It takes about a week for seeds to germinate and it takes me about 4 weeks from germination to grow a seedling to the size I want to put out into the garden, and I need a week to harden the plants off, so I need to start germinating seeds 6 weeks prior to set out date of July 1, so that would mean I will be starting germinating seeds for Bsprouts this weekend. I cover my transplants with row covers when I put them out for two reasons. First to shade them from our hot sun. Second to protect them from all the pests that are prevalent in mid summer. You can adjust the start date by how long your selected variety takes to mature, and you can do succession planting to have your broccoli and cauliflower mature over a longer period of time. I will start 6 cauliflower seedlings all at the same time, but transplant them into the garden one a week over a 6 week span to stagger the harvest. This way I have one head a week for 6 weeks. I plant broccoli in batches of 6 plants a week (I like broccoli more than cauliflower) because one head of broccoli is not enough for a meal in our household whereas one head of cauliflower is. I have never had any luck with direct seeding cole crops for some reason. But I have been told that if you are going to direct seed in summer, you need to sow the seed at twice the normal depth in order to get the seeds down to the level of moisture in the soil.

Hello again username 5 :-) My sympathies to you for the quack grass. I am sure you have heard the old saying....about changing what you can change and accepting what you can't and the wisdom to know the difference? Well...I agree with you that accepting quack grass is the wisdow to know the difference...lol. I am not sure I don't have it in the lawn, but if I do, I don't think it is everywhere. The one area I think it is in is adjacent to this vegetable area and I am not growing grass there anymore but installing a walkway with flat stones and creeping thymes between it. I am going to mulch that heavily before I do though and maybe let it sit there a whole season before I try laying stone. And I am going to plant the thyme very closely to get it to fill in fast. I am hoping that I may have killed 90% of it this year, in that area, because it has had cardboard and bark mulch covering it for three months and it has only rained twice in two months. I had another area of the yard, that I wanted to put a mulched sitting area in and I left clear plastic covering it for 2 years before we mulched it and put a sitting area there. We barely saw a weed for about 4 years after that, and just started getting them back this year, so we cardboard and bark mulched again and so far haven't had to weed this season. That area didn't have the quack grass in it though. I wanted to use the plastic technique for the quack grass but didn't want to injure the neighbor's trees. So my soil is close to ideal..hmmm...that is good to know. If I just had full sun and about an acre more of land..lol. This land used to be farmland in the 1940s. So I don't have to add lime to the soil for the veggies, right? I seem to do ok with the veggies. Last year was the worst due to horrible weather all season. Rain, cloudy, no breezes, humidity, heat..everything bad and nothing good. I got diseases on my tomatoes that I never got before. Thankfully this year was better. Even the dryness was ok for the tomatoes and peppers with supplemental watering. We also took out a 120 ft of overgrown shrubs along the lot line in the spring which really opened up the yard to air circulation. We planted new shrubs, but it will be awhile before they are that overcrowded. [g] I have one veggie bed near my back door that is on the other side of the yard. It is raised with cement blocks and instead of soil, I piled half finished compost and shredded leaves in it. I put in a couple of kale plants last spring and when it got hot, I pulled them except one that I wanted to leave to go to seed. After I collected the seed, I just left it there when I got busy. I had parsley in the bed too that I wanted to try to winter over. I put more shredded leaves around them and I was so happy to see that the parsley came back this year and has gone to seed. Love when it does that. The beneficial insects love the parsley flowers and I love the seed. The Kale plant, started growing again in the spring so I just left it, it flowered and went to seed again and I got busy again..lol .... and didn't pull it. I was so surprised to see it start growing again after it went to seed, and right now I have a kale plant producing very nice dark green leaves and it is filling up about a 4x4ft area of that bed. No covering either. We juice greens all year, so I am glad to have that plant with no work for it, right next to the back door. What is YMMV? [g] Okay well...you are right, nothing is written in stone. I may try using the lasagna bed technique and I can always add something else in another year if "disappearing" soil becomes a problem. Yes, I am growing all annual crops. How did you find the excavator that brought you in a truckload of soil? Sandy loam sounds great! I am not going to plant up that whole 35x35ft area with veggies. I am going to fill 4 raised beds that are 4x4ft. and I want to construct a structure to house compost and grow squashes and pumpkins etc up the structure. I will have a lot of just mulched area between the beds. WOW! Those silver maple roots are amazing~ ! I am SO sorry for all the trouble they have been to you. If we ever move, I am going to remember that. We had a neighbor 3 yards over just cut down every tree in his backyard. Why oh Why couldn't the people in the next yard do that?! LOL Oh, well, we aren't going to be moving anytime soon, so you are right, just have to make my peace with them. I thought maybe every fall, I should take a shovel and just push it into the ground around the perimeter of the beds to sever any small roots that are trying to get a foothold. I already found out first hand how they will go for anything raised. I have had them fill up a compost pile that I left too long, and have had them in my veggie beds over the years. What can you do...is right! Not very many people have the "perfect" growing environment. Everybody has something. Thanks so much for talking this all over with me. I am much more certain about what I need to do next year, and I can get started getting ready for next year, this fall. I rarely come to this forum. Especially this summer as I barely had a veggie garden. Had some plastic totes from Lowe's with 3 tomato plants, and a pepper plant. Two zuchinni and two eggplants in a bed in the ground...which btw was near that area that I mulched and was FULL of quack grass all season and nothing grew well. I didn't get one eggplant. The container plants grew much better. Two zuchinni were TOO much..lol. Next year, I have been told one is enough. ;-) Oh, btw, how much lawn do you have that has the quack grass in it? Have you tried that corn product that is supposed to suppress weeds? Adam

"Liquid organic ferts are already digested and the quickest way to get plants nutrients, if you want to stay organic, but again not highly concentrated." Actually, that is not precisely correct :-) Hard to get all those digestive juices gathered up from soil organisms!! Fish fertilizer is an emulsion of partially decomposed fish parts that are a by-product of the fishing industry. Other liquid organic ferts are typically plant extracts - seaweed, oilseeds, molasses or fermented sugar beets are most common. Others are more in the line of manure teas. Not digested at all but at least partially water soluble.

Yeah, and I also love the kitchen on that one. The thing to keep in mind - they don't come out and say it, but that must be a walk up. Elevators in brownstones are rare and touted. If you look at the photo, you can see the curvilinear balcony off the LR and the windowed DR to the right. That is 5 floors up from street level to carry the groceries to the kitchen. Also, oddly, the floor with the bedrooms is below. So your guests enter on the BR floor and then go up a level. These brownstones are usually carved into 3 units. The bottom unit gets a walkout basement and an entry at street level (under the front stairs). That is usually my fave because you control the little front garden, have a rear courtyard accessible from your own parking spot that accesses an alley, and you don't have to traverse a steep set of uncovered front stairs in winter. The middle unit usually gets the grand entry at the top of the stairs, and one floor above. They have the best floor but the smallest outdoor space, if any; usually a rear balcony. The top floor gets a roof deck but has to walk all those flights. We've been to half dozen open houses looking at these kinds of homes in this area, so we know the drill. It's a tad quirky!