Newyorkrita said:Honestly, there is no best way. Rows are good, square foot is good. Raised beds are usually best of you have drainage or root issues. Don't look like that is the case in your veggie area. And remember, you can start small. Plant you veggies now and expand your veggie garden later.
Why are you using roundup? If roundup drift gets on any of your "good" plants they will be gonners. Seems to me you are doing fine just digging up your grass for the veggie bed.
You are very hung up on your chart of sun hours. Honestly 4 hours of sun not much for any type of veggies. Probably the bare minimum for leafy greens. I don't know why you are trying to reduce the sun unless your climate is too brutally hot in the summertime. People plant a garden in a sunny spot, they usually don't try to reduce the sunlight much.
And some things you can not change. Bok Choi, Tatsoi, lettuce and most greens are what are called cool season crops. They will not grow in the heat of summer in sunlight or shade.
Maybe that's another reason too then, that my other flowers started dying. I made sure they didn't get hit with the spray, but come to think of it, the spray soaks in the ground , so it probably gets sucked by the other plants. But it wasn't suppose to kill other plants i was told. they said it will only affect weed. And about the sun, it's funny because my husband told me yesterday that how come farmers plant in wide open fields and it is very hot there and they harvest good food.. 
i guess i better stop thinking about just 4 hours of sun for leafy veggies.. Sometimes it gets up to 107 here..
RickCorey said:Those are good, thought-provoking questions!(apologizing in advance for Too Much Information) oh no, please don't apologize.. all the information i read here all very helpful and interesting and teaches me bit by bit. Yes i am overwhelmed reading everything at first but as i reread it, i pick up on other things i didn't get the first time i read. It's my fault too for asking too many questions
(apologizing in advance for Too Much Information)
>> And i have the Super soil enrich compost, so i just pour this compost on top of the garden bed and start mixing it with the soil? or do i put some in the hole also before placing a plant when planting?
Short answer: some of each!
If you have a limited amount of compost (everyone on a budget and lacking a compost heap has a limited amount of compost!) it is most important to loosen a biggish hole around each seedling you plant. But remember to make it as big as the roots will want to be! Perhaps dedicate 1/2 of your compost to be right near the plants' roots.
And also mix at least SOME compost into the whole row, because if roots have only one little pocket of fair soil, surrounded by clay or sand, they will fill that pocket and refuse to grow farther, and become in effect "pot-bound". And rain or watering may flood the little hole and not spread into the surrounding soil, making it worse.
So it really is best to first lay down SOME of your compost, like 1/3 or 1/2 everywhere the plants will be. Up to a 1-2" layer. (In the rows or all across a "square foot" bed. Mix that in around 6" deep or maybe only 3" deep if you don't have lots.
Also, as you enrich a planting hole, scratch it around a little so that the enrichment increases gradually toward the plant. The more abruplty the nature of the soil changes, the harder it will be water and roots to make the transition. It sounds complex, but just scratch some4 compost into a 12-16" circle, thhen scratch more compost into the inner 6" circle, and plant in the middle of that.
If this is the first year you've improved your soil, it probably needs all the compost it can get.
>> but that's too much expenses for me to buy wood or raised beds and stuff so mine is just direct to the ground planting.
That makes sense! Ignore the next 3 paragraphs unless you have bad drainage.
You CAN make raised beds without walls, just rake or shovel soil from both sides into the middle of a row, then make the top flat. But then you have to water gradually so it sinks in and doesn't run off. And the mound dries out very quickly, which is only good if your soil is waterlogged and the water table is near the surface.
How's your drainage? Is the soil really heavy clay? I'm just thinking that if you dig down and improve the soil, but the subsoil doesn't let water drain down at all, you might get your root zone too wet.
Maybe it's not a problem where you are. Do low spots in the lawn get soggy or even have puddles during a really, really heavy rain?
>> Also question about weeding, do you water first then spray weeds that are starting to come out with round up? or Round up spray first before watering?
If you spray weed killer, don't water for a few hours, or you'll wash it off the weeds and into the soil. Check the label, then add a little time in case they exagerated.
Personally, I don't use weedkiller around crops or even flowers. Doesn't RoundUp kill most broadleaf plants other than Monsanto geene-engineered "RoundUp-Ready" (tm) crops? I would check the label.
I tend to water whenever it needs it (unless I forget). Then I weed with a hoe or scuffle hoe whenever I get around to it. If I have time and energy, I PULL them up with their roots, because that keeps them from coming right back. And it is satisfying.
I think that the very best way to discourage weeds is to use about an inch of coarse mulch, like bark or wood chips or straw or pine needles (or even a plastic film, maybe).
Everyone has their own preferred methods! Weeds or grass are major problem s until you get a system going like mulching consistently, that keeps them from sprouting.
>> i have wonderful neighbor that kepps on giving us tomatoes and cucmbers from his backyard, so i thought, i will plant somethings he doesn't have so i can give him too,
Great! Maybe offer him any extra seedlings that you buy but don't have room for. If you do get into starting seeds indoors, you are bound to have lots of extras - offer him those, too.
>> i will be impatient waiting for the seeds to germinate
Agreed! And you have to fuss with keeping them moist outdoors, plus worry about bugs, slugs, cats and dogs.
That's why I like (when I have time), starting things in trays and cells indoors. I can hover and anticipate and spritz and watch them emerge like little miracles. I have them under lights in my bedroom where I see them often. But then planting them out is more work than direct sowing is.
We just moved here in this house, just a month and a half ago, so this is my first time ever to plant food and flowers.. 
All that was living on the grounds surrounding the house when we moved here was the very nasty weed..goat something... There are 2 apricot trees that my husband said were grafted,,that's the backyard. the front yard, more of the weeds, green and dried but still sicking to the ground, and i big stomp, giant olive tree that was chopped down years ago, and yuka tree, plus 3 or 4 palm trees and some other white flowering with long green leaves plants.. I think the soil is not sandy nor hard clay, i really don't know how to describe it. i will yet find out about puddles during heavy rains, like i said we've just been here for a little bit over a month. And wow.. that's a lot of seedlings waiting to be planted.. 
RickCorey said:
The slugs ate three seedlings for every one that survived. Now I have fewer slugs, and more veggies!
>> I think the soil is not sandy nor hard clay, i really don't know how to describe it.
You might be lucky and have soil right in the sweet spot: the golden middle, "loam". Plenty of fine sand and silt, and enough clay that it can form "structure".
sand:
you can push your fingers right into it, wet or dry, easily.
if you try to make a snowball, it falls apart (no stickiness unless it's wet)
if you rub the soil between two fingers, it feels slightly gritty
you can pour it out of your hand in a thin stream of fine particles, like sand in an hourglass.
slightly damp loam:
once you've fluffed it up with a pitchfork, you can push fingers into it easily.
If you make a snowball, it barely holds its shape but will fall apart into small loose clods at a slight touch
clayey-soil: you can't push a finger into it,
it takes a lot of weight to push a shovel it
You can make snowballs that stick together, and hold their shape even if you poke them.
But they are not so firm that you can juggle them.
dry clay: a shovel bounces off, you need a pick or mattock. You can chip off pieces that feel like rocks.
wet clay: soft enough that you might sink a shovel into it slowly, with effort, but then it sticks so tightly that you can't easily pull it back out.
If you can get a handful of wet clay, you can knead it like modeling clay. You can juggle it and probably break a window with it. You might be able to moisten your figners and squeeze out a thin ribbon of pure clay.
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Someone told me that a soil must have at least 50% sand and no more than about 27% clay in order to be called "loam".
Even 'clay loam' and 'silty clay loam' can have no more than 40% clay.
Someone else said that an "ideal" soil would have 50% "pore space", but that sounds VERY open to me.
I hope to get 20% air space if I'm lucky (gauging it by eye and by guess.)
I agree with this, but some other advice in this PDF seems to me focused too much on "landscaping" and not enough on "gardening". A soil with NO clay can't form "structure" because it has no stickiness - it is TOO friable.
"Soils with more clay content, such as the various loams, aggregate into larger chunks called peds. Highly aggregated soils are optimal for root growth and aeration, but can be easily destroyed by any activity that results in soil compaction."
http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda...
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Science experiment: put an inch or so of soil into a clear jar and mostly fill the jar with water.
Shake until the soil "dissolves".
Watch closely as it settles out.
Gravel and Grit will drop "like a rock", in a second. Anything over 1-2 mm is grit. Smaller then 1 mm is sand.
sand will settle within a few seconds (⅛ mm to 1 mm)
very fine sand, like 1/16 mm or down to 0.05 mm, may take a few more seconds - - - > that shows how much sand you have
What remains in suspension for a little while is particles smaller than around 1/16th mm (around 0.0025" or 2.5 mils).
According to the USDA Soil Texture Classification system, the sand-silt boundary is 0.05 mm (50 microns or around 50 times the size of a bacterium).
Silt is supposed to pass through a #200 mesh, which I think is around 5 mils. I think silt will settle within a minute or so.
I read that silt and clay are chemically different. Clay has thin plate-shaped particles held together by electrostatic forces, so it is really sticky unless broken up by organic matter and sand.
I believe that most clay is colloidal in size - mostly smaller than silt particles, and it settles very slowly.
ctcarol said:newbiemomgardner, I'll keep this short, I promise. You have gotten some really good advice, but probably too much, too soon. You live in a great farming area! Your soil and weather are well suited to growing food crops. Sunset Western Garden is a good resource, though I haven't really used it "on line" much, as I am a book person, and they update their book every few years. If you have some feed stores, or other farm supply stores in your area, which I assume you do, they could be a better source of seedlings and advice than Home Depot or Lowes. Don't be shy! Talk to your neighbors, and check other gardens in your neighborhood. Gardeners love to share advice! Online sites like this one are great, but just keep in mind the differences in climate and seasons.
Actually when i went for a run with my dog this morning, i passed by one of my neighbor's front yard and he had a part of his front yard dedicated to vegetables and most part flowers.. and tomorrow my mom in law and sister in law are coming over with seedlings, so i will have a "on the job training " kinda thing..
RickCorey said:>> too much, too soon.
You're right! I just can't shut up once I start typing. It's a character flaw. "Doing" will make everything clearer than "reading", even if you do lose a few more plants the first year.
>> The consistency of the soil where you can or can not stick your finger right away, this is when it isn't wet right?
Mostly right, or it doesn't matter too much.
This would be MUCH easier if we could both take a handful of the same soil, and say "see how that crumbles easily?" or "that nasty stuff is clay, but not the WORST clay I ever saw". Once you have some "happy" beds of your own, you'll know right away when some other soil doesn't come up to the same standard.
Or a neighbor will point with pride to her pampered loam in a raised bed, and roll her eyes at unimproved soil and
To me, the hardest gardening thing to learn by reading is what the heck people mean when they talk about starting seedlings in mix that is "damp but not moist" or "moist but not soggy". For me it took a few years to figure out "NO, I am STILL overwatering those darn seeds!!!"
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Moisture makes the most difference to clay and soil with lots of clay. Clay will be very very hard when dry. If you spend enough time to get clay to accept some moisture, it will become soft, gooey, and sticky. Still pretty difficult to stick a finger into it, until it gets SO wet that it's make like pudding.
Being wet won't make "good" loamy soil much harder or softer. You'll always be able to push a finger deep into great soil, dry or wet.
(If it feels muddy or gooey, it is holding too much water, probably has more clay than is really ideal, and would be improved by better drainage: like more organic matter and more coarse sand.)
Sand is funny. Dry sand is like flour: your whole foot will sink into it easily, like dry sand at the beach. Wet sand is more 'glued together", like sand right at the water's edge - firm enough to walk on. But you can still push a finger into it if you push.
You know it is sand if the water drains right out, fast.
