Wisdom

Hi finally have Mel's book and I'm enjoying reading it very much, in five minute increments! LOL Busy time around here so I wanted to see if anyone could help me with a question.

Being in zone 8/9a, what would you recommend starting as seed right now indoors?

Thank you so much for all of your help! I'm really learning so much from you all!

You can start anything indoors that you want, imo. However, being so far beyond your frost date, and likely getting temps in the upper 80s daily, you can likely plant any summer (warm season) veggies/plants directly in the garden outside.

I am not one for doing more work than is required. To me, if I can go directly into the garden, I will skip starting indoors.....unless I'm experimenting or learning the method.

As long as you can keep up with keeping the top of the soil moist, you'll be fine direct seeding. I do start some things indoors just because we're already in the 90s and I have a hard time keeping up with the watering enough for germination and tiny little seedlings. But you're probably not as hot as we are yet.

Definitely wait on cool weather crops until Fall and just go for the summer crops now.

Welcome!

I would say plant okra, pole beans, and edamame directly in the garden. If you like to them of corse. Your local extention office should have a list of what to plant when in your area and what verities do best there. You can always get transplants of warm season crops like eggplant and peppers for example, too.

I'm in 8b/9a (I think they changed us to 9a), and I've started everything in the garden (had the garden ready in mid-March, so that's when we planted) so far. I don't know that there's anything that would need to be started inside in our zone at this point, unless you have something that does not germinate well at all in 90* weather. There's a chart at the back of the book that lists various vegetables and their germination rates at different temps. Page 253.

For some things, you can see that there is a dramatic difference in germination rates when you go from 86* to 95*. At the same time, depending on how cool you keep it in your home, a few things may find it too cool to germinate indoors.

Some vegetables need cooler temps as they are maturing, which is why the seed packets instruct us in this zone to plant them starting in July, or even September.

Your local county extension office offers several publications at:

http://montgomery-tx.tamu.edu/pubcat.cfm?COUNTY=Montgomery&CatID=332

The vegetable planting chart should get you going.

Hank