I usually do warm-season veggies towards end of winter, for me in zone seven that would be middle to end of February or early March, I can transplant after the seedlings are an inch or so tall. However that depends upon if I've gotten the ground prepped sufficiently for transplanting. In my veggie beds I like to dig in some soil amendments like leaves, grass and ferts, then wait a week or two for the ground to settle and cull the weed seedlings. Once that is done then I can transplant. Generally, for the warm season veggies, this would be close to Mother's Day weekend. As you're in a slighter colder zone, you may want to wait until the end of May.

Sorry, you should dump them. A week is too long. Anything longer than 24 hours is too long to trust to eat. They could have botulism in them since they are low acid and you did not add nearly enough vinegar. For your safety, please, do not use recipes from online from people who have no food preservation training. Stick with the Ball blue book, any of the extension websites or publications, things that state they use USDA tested guidelines. Otherwise you put yourself at a risk for getting food poisoning. You will find some veggies need 100 percent vinegar to be safe. Check each one carefully so you will know.

I usually space a foot apart too, but sometimes I cheat and instead of leaving 3' between rows, I'll plant a double row with 2' between the rows, but I only harvest from either side of the double row because there's no space between the rows 2' apart in order to walk and harvest. If I was space-challenged, I'd only grow the shorter and more dwarf types, but even they can get pretty big in a good rainfall year. Sometimes I vary my spacing a bit....Baby Bubba and Little Lucy can get by on 10" spacing in rows only 2' apart just fine. Some of the really big ones, though, like most cowhorn types get huge and I like to put them 18" apart. Okra seed certainly doesn't hold its viability very long and I don't like to use okra seed that's more than 2 years old.

Carol, I'm thrilled your new kitchen is almost done. Redoing the kitchen is on my long-range list of things for Tim to stay busy with once he retires (but that's a few years away yet). The first way I turned peppers to powder was to dry them down as much as I could without scorching them and then I let them cool, put them in a plastic ziplock bag and pounded them into oblivion with a hammer. Then, I put the powder into a pie pan and put it back into the oven to dry a little more so that if there was a shred of moisture in it, it would dry out. The more civilized way is to grind them with a mortar and pestle. Those are the only two ways I've tried so far. One note about working with habanero powder....DO NOT accidentally inhale any of it while working with it, wear gloves, and wash your hands after disposing of the gloves because the powder can go airborne and up inside the gloves. Processing peppers is dangerous as you're walking a fine line between creatively processing surplus produce and harming yourself. One mistake I made (and this has nothing to do with powdered peppers, but just peppers in general) this year was that I mixed up two bowls of peppers together. One was Zavory, a NON-HOT habanero-type pepper and the other was plain old red and orange habaneros. Once they were in the bowl together, I couldn't tell which was which until I sliced them and cut a tiny sliver of each and tasted it. My tongue burned for hours. Next year, I am not even going to harvest them on the same day, and I'll put the non-hot ones immediately into a labeled container to keep them straight. If you want to do a seed swap, we probably could do it in January? It is such a quiet month anyway, and we all know I have enough cowhorn okra seeds for everyone on the forum and Jay has enough tomato seeds for the entire USA. I have been diligently saving Purple Hyacinth Bean seeds too. Dawn