GardenersCardiff answers:

Dig This!

Think Dirty

Growing Pains

GardenersCardiff answers:

Personally I would save the greenhouse for out of doors in the spring, which will greatly prolong your outdoor growing season.
For growing stuff indoors, take a look at Amazon, for example, and look at florescent grow light fixtures with broad spectrum bulbs. You can get inexpensive, energy efficient systems starting at $50 that you can hang in your shed for winter gardening, that should last you for many years. Also, go on seed catalogue sites, like Veseys Seeds, you can see some really neat indoor growing systems there and decide if one of those would suit you better.
Many of the veggies like your cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, lettuces and greens, like cooler weather and will die off in too much heat. So other than making sure that it is warm enough for them to germinate, which isn’t much, what they need is 6-8 hours of daylight to actually grow.
Things like peppers, and some herbs do require heat and minimum 8-10 hours of daylight to survive and produce flowers and set fruit.
Many of your vegetables are best directly sewn right where they are going to grow. They will take care of their own sprouting. This is stuff like your lettuces, mescluns, cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, mustard and asian greens etc. Plant, water, and keep an eye on them. They will do their own thing.
Things like peppers, tomatoes, and egg plants like to be nice and warm to sprout, and need to stay warm to grow. What we do is take a plastic container, fold a piece of paper towel to fit the bottom, and put your pepper seeds for example, inside a fold of the paper towel. Wet the paper towel with warm water, put the lid on, and put it up on a warm, dark shelf for a couple of days. When you check them, you can see which seeds are good by which ones are sprouting. Plant them in starter pots and keep them where it is warm and light. Transplant to bigger pots when they get their second set of true leaves. They will need the root space. This is where you will really want a good growing system as these kinds of plants are a little more demanding than the cool-weather ones.
Having good soil is essential to growing anything, whether it is in pots or out in a vegetable patch or green house. I will post my link on good soil and what to look for.
I plant my cool weather vegetables in the greenhouse often as early as Febuary if the ground is not frozen in there, and we are often eating out of the greenhouse in March. Once the days get longer and hotter in April/May, though, all those cool weather veggies are about done with the heat (they wilt and die, or bolt (send up seed stalks) and become really bitter. That is the signal to plant new greens outside for the next couple of months. Your tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, etc that like the heat, should be started indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost, if they are going into an outdoor greenhouse. So when your days start being warm, and greenhouse temps start hitting 20 degrees and up, you can take your hothouse veggies out to the greehouse through the day for sun and to get them used to being out there. Plants can go through climate change by the way. Bring them in at night until the nights are warm and your plants wont go into shock and die out there from cold. Then you transplant them into the greenhouse and leave them there.
If you are going to do all this in the garage, your biggest thing is going to be making sure you have enough daylight from your grow lights, and heat for the plants that need it.
Good luck, I hope that helps

GardenersCardiff answers:

Wat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GardenersCardiff answers:

I live in Seattle, Washington which gets very little sun until July. I also have neighbors with 3 fir trees that block a portion of the sun that we do receive. Last year we did not get enough sunny days to ripen my tomotoes.

I agree with FarmCzar that if you can grow tomatoes which need plenty of sun, that you will be able to grow most summer vegetables with out any problems. Besides choosing early season varieties, you can also get an earlier start on many of these vegetables by starting them indoors from seeds. Here is a good blog on starting vegetables indoors to transplant to your garden:
http://urbangardensolutions.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/should-i-be-growing-vegetables-from-seed

Also there are many cool weather vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, etc that perfer some shade and a little cooler temperatures to grow. These are great to start the spring garden with and to plant in places that do not get enough sun for your warm weather vegetables. Here is a link to a list of cool weather vegetables:
http://www.urbangardensolutions.com/Cool-Weather-Winter-Vegetables-a/152.htm

You can learn what grows best in your area, by seeing what the local farmers bring to the farmers markets. Your local extension office is a great resource for information in your area and will allow you to find a master gardener in your area. Here is a link for all 50 states: http://www.urbangardensolutions.com/List-of-Extension-Offices-By-State-a/266.htm

For Michigan:

West Vancouver real estate luxury homes

http://www.umassextension.org/index.php/about-extension/locations

GardenersCardiff answers:

Cute idea, as is word play.

Loam grown
Down and dirty
Green side UP

I could work on this for hours, but won’t. I wish you well in your callouses.

Steven Wolf

GardenersCardiff answers:

You could discuss how bad it is to over-till your soil since it can kill the worms and destroys the hyphae formed by advantageous fungi.