total garden newbie! many questions!

[dwbonfire87]

hello everyone, i am in NC and i am attempting a successful garden this year! every other year i have gotten overwhelmed with weeds or something and my plants never do well. i joke that instead of a green thumb, i have a black thumb! everything sprouts and then i plant outside and a few weeks later, dead. i am hoping to change this! heres what i am planting or have already planted..

yellow squash (doing well!)
green peppers (a few doing well so far)
cucumber (doing well!)
beans (doing ok)
peas (need to put support stakes up for them i think...)
tomatoes (bought already started, transplanted and are about dead..)
carrots (not a clue how to plant, space, nothing! but some have sprouted)

i also planted corn, but seeing from other threads i did this way too early..
onions i had no luck with either. i got a tiny sprout but nothing else

i guess my questions are on the carrots, potatoes, corn and why my tomatoes died?!
how do you all start your carrots? i have seeds, know to plant only 1/4" deep, but do i plant in a row ONE seed at a time? i think my problem was i put a few seeds in each hole like 3-4 inches apart. they just grew up in big bunches, and when i pulled one up to investigate i had the tiniest carrot known to man! how long do they take until harvest?
also with corn and onions, how do you plant those? and how long do they take?
i was suprised with the tomatoes, i have always been told they are quite easy.
i honestly think my garden is much too crowded, i have to dig up my cuke and move it over because my yellow squash is HUGE and covering it.

any advice would be great! i am thinking of making another garden in a few weeks to plant more so i have another harvest later on (providing i get to that point

by the way - i have a raised garden bed..

 

[i_am2bz]

Hi dwbonfire87! Welcome, from a fellow Tar Heel!

Wow, those are a lot of questions, so I will leave most of them to folks here who have much more expertise than I do.

Tomatoes - how early did you plant? We had some temps in the 30's a week or so ago. 'Maters can be sensitive to cold.

This is my first year for carrots, & pretty much everyone agrees they take a long time to sprout. I put 1 seed per hole & they're still pretty crowded together. Haven't pulled any up, tho.

Onions...I've planted bunching onions with seeds that turned out great. Globe onions, I planted "seed" onions that come in a bag or loose in a bin.

Gardening in the south is much different (IMHO) than up north, so it may take you some trial & error.... Now I'll sit back & wait for vfem, Kim_NC, & others to chime in.

 

[Collector]

Welcome to TEG, I dont know much since I am a newbie to. I do know that squash needs alot of space to roam. Most veggies like squash,beans, peas,carrots do better seeded into the spot where they will be grown. What type of soil do you have in your raised bed? have you added any amendments to your beds? There are plenty of experienced gardeners here to help more than I can. As far as your tomatoes go you shouldnt plant them untill your latest frost date goes by!

 

[digitS']

Welcome, dwbonfire87 .

There isn't much wrong with putting lots of plants in the ground as long as the soil is fertile and the gardener has made some plans on how to keep unwanted weeds out. Here is something I think is very useful from Virginia Tech, Intensive Gardening Methods (click). The author gives information on raised beds and spacing (carrots, too).

Often, plants at retail outlets have come almost straight out of a greenhouse. They are still tender, tender, tender. They should never go straight into the open garden until the gardener can determine how ready they are for all that exposure.

I have some tomatoes that are purple from the cold. That happened in a heated greenhouse!

Since starting seed was too early this year, I began to try to slow things down by running the greenhouse as cool as I felt comfortable with. There is a low shelf right up against the plastic on the south wall. It is so far from the furnace and the plants are so close to that plastic - it's really cold there! That flat of small tomato plants shouldn't have gone on that shelf . . . :/

Phosphorus intake problem, I've read. The plant just can't move the P thru its roots and stem and . . . the leaves turn purple. It isn't a game-ending problem. Now that the weather has warmed, they are slowly regaining their normal green.

That will continue until I plunk them down in the outside garden. Then, they'll probably go back to being purple again .

Steve

 

[calendula]

Carrots: We will normally soak our carrot seeds in a little warm water over night before planting them. The next day, I carefully pour it through a paper towel to catch the seeds. Then I pat them dry, and mix them with some dry, fine sand. Make sure the soil is loose, deep, and rock-free before planting. Spread the sand/seed mixture over the prepared bed, and cover them with a fine sprinkle of soil. Mist them gently. Once they are sprouted, thin them out so that they're 2-3 inches apart.

 

[AmyRey]

Greetings!

 

[nachoqtpie]

Hiya from the Crystal Coast!! Being a "Yankee" by birth... and this being my first year gardening here... I'm basicaly a newbie as well! Great to see other NC gardeners tho!

 

[journey11]

Oops, I missed this thread somehow the other day. Just wanted to say Hi and !

I wouldn't say you were too early on your corn. We can plant our first round of sweet corn here in WV on April 25th according to the ag extension. Corn will germinate well once the temps are mid-50's or higher.

Onions, now that's a mystery. Maybe you planted them too deep? I leave about 1/3rd of the tip sticking out of the ground on mine, which is supposed to help you get bigger bulbs. But I've buried them under an inch of soil when I was first learning to garden and still they sprouted.

Carrots, I just like to scatter them over an area and lightly scratch them into the soil. I thin them as they come up to have about 2" or so between them.

 

[dwbonfire87]

Hiya from the Crystal Coast!! Being a "Yankee" by birth... and this being my first year gardening here... I'm basicaly a newbie as well! Great to see other NC gardeners tho!

get out of town! im a yankee too lol born and raised in Massachusetts where might you be from!?



also, thanks to everyone for all your advice. I am going to start some new seeds for the ones i had no luck with, and try again :tools

 

[vfem]

Welcome! Glad to have a new face... and ANOTHER neighbor! (Also Yankee born... grew up in CT outside Hartford)

You've gotten some great advice so far, and don't want to over load you.... so far you seem to be doing great. Just don't worry, and give everyone a bit of love and compost, and you'll do fine as a gardener!

:watering