Central Pennsylvania Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Do any of you garden?
I grew up on a farm -- out near Pittsburgh -- and haven't grown anything since then.
I know the growing season starts earlier and tends to be longer in this area, but I'm unsure/nervous about when people in this area actually start planting things. When do you normally begin prepping your garden/planting?
I'm also not used to the clay soil -- any advice on what vegetables you've had success with in this area?
I'd like to only grow things we already eat in excess -- like green beans, broccoli, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and perhaps strawberries (at DH's request) but I don't want to spend money on plants that don't do well here.
I know about the PSU Extension, asking local nurseries etc, just looking for advice from you gals as well. 
Kelly
Kelly Be Welll
Re: Do any of you garden?
I have a huge garden! Last year I did all my herbs (mint, basil (4 plants it was a little to much in that dept.), parsley, oregeno, Thyme, and chives), green beans, carrots, radishes, green pepers, tomatos, broccoli, 3 types of lettuce, cucumbers, zuchhini, and spaghetti squash.
This year I plan on adding asparagus (which takes like 2 years until you can turn out a crop) and snow peas. I will plant those in the next 3 or so weeks. The rest of the stuff last year we planted late! It was Mid-May, but it was super rainy I remember I had bought all the plants and they sat in my sun room for 2 weeks before we could go out and plant and it was still soggy I was so worried they wouldn't produce. The only thing we had trouble with last year was the tomatos. I had huge plants (8 of them to do all the canning and everything) and right before they turned red they got the blight (there was some super tomato plant bug going around- my dad got it to). It was so upsetting. Anyway I would say plant after the last frost which is usually near the End of April or so... I was still getting peppers and stuff way into September last year so our growing year is pretty long.
Oh we also do blueberries (I bought the bushes from the York Conservation League) - I want to do strawberries but I am worried about the birds - I was looking into one of those topsy turvey strawberry plants though that I can put in my sun room (it gets full sunlight) so the birds can't get to them - my cousin took an old barrel and put holes in it and she plants hers like that with netting overtop.
I can't wait for summer to get back to my garden!
My brother plants a large garden at my parents' house because they have lots of land. However, we all reap the benefits and all take care of it at least some. We have had luck with everythign you mentioned. We do however cover our garden every fall in natural fertilizer (horse manure) and then till it under in the spring. So the ground is very rich.
I actually have friends that have requested some of our manure, haha. DH got two loads of it at our new construction house so that our grass would grow well.
To answer your question, I think my brother starts all the plants in his house in April and then plants them outside at some point in May. He follows the guidelines on the backs of the seed packets.
Thanks ladies.
We bought our house last year, so I am really starting from scratch.
I need to get the ground tilled (the woman before us didn't have a garden) and get some manure down...I hope I have enough time yet to do that before I need to plant! LOL
Thanks! We live in the west york area -- actually on the edge of spring grove.
Our back yard backs up to a field - I already see us investing more in fences and protections against varmints than in the plants themselves! LOL
Last year was my first year at my new house and we started our garden from scratch also. I went to Lowes and they have these green poles and fence and just put the poles in and wraped the fence around it (the poles have these hook thingys on them so we hooked the fence in place) then I pushed the fence a little into the ground and sorta just took dirt and pushed it up against the sides so there are were no holes. In the front I made a little door by overlapping it and holding it tight in place with bungee cords. We needed a fence for rabits, groundhogs, and deer. The deer won't attempt if there is a fence cause it is to hard for them to get out once they are in. We had one rabit try... but he met his demise...
I bought all my plants at ashcombs in Mechanicsburg. If you watch sometimes they have really good sales. The only thing that was done from seed was the beans and carrots.
It depends on what you are doing - starting from seed or buying starter plants as to when you plant. if you are starting from seed indoors, most can be planted in April and May indoors and planted outside in may and june. I believe our frost free date is May 15th and most plants don't go into the ground outside before that. The exceptions would be strawberries, asparagus, peas, lettuces and probably a few that I'm forgetting!
We started our garden from scratch last year and had decent results. We just added compost to our soil and made raised beds. We had great success with carrots, onions (red, white, and green), peas, basil, parsley, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuces, yellow squash. We got everything into the ground late last year so I blame that for any problems we had! Hopefully this year I'll be able to do much better. We did have tomatoes and peppers (jalapenos and bell) but not very many. Probably because they were planted late but also because it didnt really get very hot last year.
hope that helps.
Kristen