A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Getting ready for spring

Hi everyone! I'm new around here and a novice at vegetable gardening. I've had a few gardens in the past but I usually lose my cucumbers to powdery mildew and most other things to aphids. I'm giving it another go this spring. I'm hopefully going to plant zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, peas, beans, tomatoes and sweet peppers. I haven't done anything to the ground yet. My husband is installing a whole yard sprinkler system in the spring so I should have adequate water throughout the growing season. Should I go ahead and dig the ground now and start enriching it with vegetable peels, egg shells, etc. or should I just start a compost pile and add it to the garden in the spring? I'm not very good at this so any advice is much appreciated. I'd really love to have a healthy productive garden this year.

- Rosemarie

PS - I live in Delaware which I think is zone 7 and the winters are not too cold around here anymore.

Welcome, Rosemarie. Good luck with your veggies. My difficulties here are water supply and critters so I rely heavily on friends and neighbors for fresh goodies in summer. I think I would go with the compost pile for right now. It may be a little late to ask things to decompose in-ground before it is time to plant. But someone may come along with a better idea soon so stay tuned.

Hi Rosemarie. My son in law is from Delaware. His parents still live there and were just here for Christmas.

This year you may need to buy already composted stuff at Lowe's or somewhere and amend your soil with that. There may be quick compost drums but I don't know about those. My compost pile is outside and it takes a couple of years for the matter to be ready for the garden.

Can you plan in advance for the aphids and powdery mildew? Spray early?

And I wanted to say that overhead watering is about the worst thing you can do to a vegetable garden. That will spread powdery mildew and other problems faster than anything else. You want to water only the roots of most of these plants.

welcome rosemarie

i don't have anything to add to sheri and tina. they know their stuff

So true the best way to water a garden veggie or otherwise is with drip irrigation. So if you can talk your husbamd into doing that in your flower beds anad veggie beds and leave the sprinkler system for the grass that would be great.

it is to late to compost for this comming spring. Sorry to say that but it's a great time to start for the year after. I have two compost piles going.

If you have the room you can start the zucchini, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes and sweet peppers indoors. I use the plastic window boxes for the zucchini and cucumbers so they have room to spread out without me having to worry about them tipping over their pots. Beans if they are bush beans start well inside. And tomatoes if they are started early can be topped and rooted to increase the yield of the plant.

Good luck with your garden.

I think peppers take a long time to sprout so if you're doing peppers from seeds start indoors in your climate.

Thank you all so much for the warm welcomes and advice. I meant to come back here sooner but my family caught some kind of bug. I can't wait to get started and I'm ready to start ordering once I get my catalogs in. AND...I talked to my husband about using the low pressure drip hoses for the garden. I've always just watered with the garden hose (at night). Sounds like that could be why powdery mildew always killed my crops. Thanks for all your help and I look forward to getting to know everyone here.

- Rosemarie