Hello to Austria from California! One thing is for sure, you will NEVER forget your first year of gardening!:) How sad that the first garden center did not give you good advice.[been there, done that] Re: what to do with all the compost you already have: some of it you may use in building the container soil [see Al/s mix below]. The rest I would suggest holding in a container [can,bag,etc] or pile on the ground. You will eventually find a use for it. ... or if some is still in the bags, return to the garden center.... or maybe trade with another gardener for something you need. GOOD LUCK! let us know how things work out for you. ///// Al is the go-to-guy for container soil mixes. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/contain/msg0918361520140.html?103 === Have you seen all the different forums in the garden web? http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/ ==== Container forum http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/contain/ ==== European forums http://www.uk.gardenweb.com/forums/ Here is a link that might be useful: Al's container soil mix

Brittany, Welcome to the forum. For planting dates, watch your weather forecast and watch what Leslie is planting and when. She's geographically closer to you than anyone else on this forum, I think. This early in the season, the overnight lows are more important than the daytime highs because we have plenty of pleasant days but still are having really cold nights here and there. It is easy to get excited about warm, mild winter days but we have to remember that the nights are still cold, and the soil temperatures still are pretty cold too. Most of us have very little actually growing in the ground right now. All I have in the ground right now are onions and perennial herbs. For plants that are grown inside and started from seed and then transplanted into the garden, you still have time to start your own seeds inside if you have the space and proper lighting or you can buy transplants at nurseries or big box stores. I bought transplants for years when I had a small garden and only started growing from seed once I had the space for a lot of plants. I know maybe you feel like you're behind, but you're not. Many of the plants we've started from seed and have growing indoors will not go outside and into the ground for another month or even longer depending on what the weather does. Have you measured the size of your garden? That's a good place to start. It will help you to figure out how much space you have, and then you can plot out your planting plan on paper and see if you have space to grow everything you want to grow. In our early years here, I drew out a scale drawing on graph paper so I could figure out where to put everything. Now that we've been here for quite a while, I just figure it out in my head, but in those early years, putting the plan down on paper was really helpful. Then, I'd suggest you do the soil jar test I've linked below. It will help you understand what kind of soil you have in your garden area right now. Then, if you have heavy clay that drains too slowly or sandy soil that drains too quickly, you can learn what you need to do to improve your soil before planting time rolls around. Understanding your soil will help you decide what you can grow. For example, if you have extremely rocky soil, it may be impossible to grow root crops like carrots and potatoes until/unless you remove a lot of those rocks. If your soil is dense clay and drains slowly, you may need to make raised beds if the garden that came with your house doesn't have raised beds, and that's especially true for plants like tomatoes and peppers that don't tolerate wet roots very well. If you have sand that drains very quickly, you may need to add organic matter to it to help it to hold moisture, but many plants grow well in sandy and sandy loam soils---and carrots, southern peas and melons of all kinds would love that kind of soil. Most plants will grow in most soils, but with sandy soils, there are often root knot nematode issues and with dense, clay soils there can be issues with drainage and root rot. So, understanding your soil before you start helps you make important decisions about what to grow and where to grow it. If you have very sandy soil, it is more important to chose vegetable varieties that have been bred to tolerate root knot nematodes since root knot nematodes often became a problem in gardens with sandy soil. Since y'all get hotter out west earlier than other parts of the state, you may find it challenging to grow cool-season crops. You may find that your region of the state warms up so quickly that the weather gets too hot too early for the cool-season plants. To some extent, I encounter that issue here in southcentral OK most years, so with cool-season crops, I try to plant varieties with relatively short days-to-maturity so the plants have the best chance to produce before the weather gets too hot for them. With tomatoes in particular, it is very important to choose proven varieties that perform well in southern parts of the country where the weather goes from too cold to too hot almost overnight. Tomatoes have a fairly limited time period here in which the air temperatures are in the right range for good fruit set to occur, so varieties with shorter DTMs usually do a better job of setting fruit early before it gets too hot. However, most tomato plants that produce small, bite-sized fruit will set fruit much later in the summer than plants that produce larger fruit. Last year, SunGold and Mountain Magic produced fruit well throughout the summer, even with temperatures over 100 degrees for 70-something days, and even when our high temp was 110 or higher. So, if you choose the right varieties and have some luck on your side as well, you can get a good harvest despite the weather. Mulching helps because it helps keep the soil temp lower and helps the soil stay moist, and some of us have had some success with using shadecloth fabric to reduce the mid- through late-summer heat stress on tomatoes and peppers. Remember, too, that gardening is a journey and not a destination so enjoy the process and be prepared for setbacks along the way. There's never a 'perfect' gardening year here because our summers are so brutal, but there are lots of good years. We all can tell you what we've tried, what we've learned, what works or doesn't work for us, etc., but you will have to be willing to experiment to learn what works for you in your climate and your soil, and you shouldn't be afraid to experiment. It is one of the best ways to learn. And, you need to know that what works one year will not necessarily work in another year. I have to make big changes to my gardening methods in wet years when my county gets 40 to 50" of rain, and have to be willing to make other changes to my gardening methods in a year when we only have 18 or 20 or 22" of rainfall. So, be willing to be flexible and go with the flow because in this climate, you have to scramble at times to keep the weather from destroying your garden. Sometimes, no matter what you do, Mother Nature wins. For example, you can have the most beautiful garden in the world, and then along comes a tornado (which happened to one of our forum members last spring) or a hailstorm or a severe downburst and it just annihilates your garden. While events like that can be incredibly frustrating, it goes with the territory when you live and garden in this part of the country. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Jar Test for Texture

Sam, if these are raised beds (or just inground beds), then you do not want to add a potting soil. Potting soils are designed specifically for container growing and are unnecessarily expensive to add to a raised bed or inground garden plus add nothing beneficial to assist with the growth or productivity of plants grown in this manner. So no potting soil, no perlite :-) If the previous owners said the beds were ready to go, I might try them as-is before making any changes. Otherwise, just adding some good quality organic matter to the beds (compost) should provide all the supplementation required. As to what crops to start out with now, you might want to see what locals suggest - try posting that question on the California Gardening forum. In my area (a bit further north), fall planting is restricted to cool season crops - pretty much anything in the cabbage family, greens (the spinach should be fine), some root crops, late peas and onions and garlic. It just doesn't get hot enough this late in the season to encourage the proper development and fruiting of warm season crops like squashes, okra or green beans, which are normally summer (not fall) growing plants. But your climate might be more receptive to these types of crops so check with local growers to confirm.

I certainly agree it is iffy to add a lot of amendments to a garden without knowing what you're starting with. For example a lot of people seem to think adding lime is always good because, well, everyone knows that, right? I would never recommend lime without knowing pH, or the type of lime without knowing Ca and Mg levels. Same goes for trace mineral supplements (rock dusts), mycrorrhyzae, etc. etc. However you can almost never go wrong with compost. It is generally neutral, not extremely high in NPK, has trace minerals, lots of all important organic matter, and teeming with beneficial microbes. It would only be a bad idea in a rare case when soil is already loaded with organic matter or too high in P and K. Unlikely in a new garden in the Midwest. Most likely it's a clay or silty clay or silty sand with fairly neutral pH and low organic matter. Since the OP was not asking about lime or expensive boutique amendments, the risk presented by recommending just compost without a soil test seems pretty small in this case. As far as contaminants, I offered some basic info and the OP has not come back with further info or concerns on that so I let it be. Whew. It took me way longer to write all that down than it did to think it. :-D