Hi Kai, Welcome to the forum. I'm so glad to have you join us and hope you'll have a wonderful time gardening at your new place. I don't know what county you're in, but I'd definitely do the soil test first. I'd also try to figure out how fast the land drains (you could use a post hole digger to dig a couple of holes in your garden bed area, fill them with water and see how many hours or days it takes them to drain) and I'd do the jar test (linked below) to figure out the composition of the soil. Once you know if your soil is more clay, or sand, or silt, you'll know what you need to do to improve it. If it were me, the top priority would be to remove the bermuda grass as much as possible AND break up the compacted soil and do what I could to improve its' texture/friability. When we built our garden after moving here in 1999, we rototilled up the grass, and I spent WEEKS on my hands and knees filling a 5-gallon bucket with every bit of bermuda grass plant, stolon, root, runner, etc. that I could find. I also removed all the other roots I could find, especially the nutgrass roots/nutlets and the bulbs of wild onions. Then, after I thought I had "all" of it, we'd rototill again and I'd start all over from scratch. After 3 or 4 rounds of that, I really did have most of the roots out of the ground. Of course, turning over the soil exposes billions of weed seeds to the sun and they all are going to sprout, but that is true of any new land you break for a garden plot. Even after doing that, of course, I still had to fight the grass and weeds continually, but had much less to remove every year than I had the year before. I'd urge you to be as organic as possible because it works and it helps the earth instead of harming it. I am not 100% organic, and I don't hesitate to use Round-up or other glyphosates to try to keep the bermuda grass under control, but I do try to be as organic as possible. Study the climatology of your county and be sure you understand the average freeze dates and averages as well as your monthly rainfall. It can be very hard to get the cool season crops in at the right time if the weather is not cooperating, and with the speed at which our weather goes from "too cold" to "too hot", proper timing is even more important here than it is in areas that have longer, milder springs before summer's heat arrives. It IS almost planting time, and I am so glad. I hope you have time to get your soil ready before potato and onion planting time gets here. You will see that we discuss spring planting, bermuda grass removal and soil improvement/bed building (among many other topics) non-stop here in the spring. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Fine Gardening Article Featuring Jar Soil Test

Cute! Keep us posted as to how it goes You might be able to forego a cover as long as you don't mind watering more often. :)

Something i forgot to mention, i have a BB with 3 cotyledons, nothing too amazing, but there's another with two seedlings out of one seed, two leaders, the stems were fused a few millimeters above the soil level. There is a chance that the twins were two thin seeds stuck together, but i always check for that beforehand and do not like leaving them stuck together. I plan on growing them out myself, i wanted to mark them today before they become lost in the mix and unidentifiable. Pruning technique for the twins should be interesting. I took a picture of them a couple of weeks back, sent the pics to my PC, but can't find them for the life of me now... Steve

Antmary - 10 flowers - that is impressive - that is what I would expect from my experience with Brandy Boy - you should have a prolific plant! Interesting observation about the leaves! I noticed Yolo's plant leaves are more similar to your plant (nice tomato Yolo!). I went back and looked at our plants when they were even younger than yours - and the leaves are very large. It must be a function of my soil and fertilizer? Which plant will produce bigger/better tomatoes? Perhaps your plant - as much of my plant's energy appears to be going to the leaves? It may not be a function of pruning as the photo shows my plant before I prune suckers? It may be a GH affect? I am sure Carolyn would have an answer !