On 3/7/2015 12:37 PM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:

We can plant carrots starting in mid-February through mid-April and then
it gets to hot to plant them. Probably should have put them in last
month for a good start. The soil stays fairly warm as we mostly have
sunshine every day.
I succession-plant carrots from about November until about now,
depending on temperature, although most years I optimistically (and
pointlessly) continue to plant until April. Despite the, no doubt,
brief cool spell we're having now, consistently cool weather definitely
is gone and planting carrots is just mean. However, I do have a little
patch of carrots of unknown variety (poor record keeping—they didn't
sign the register) in full bloom right now. Gonna save the seeds and
see what comes from them the coming autumn. Edible carrots, I hope.
Haven't grown zucchini for years and years but I do plant four
yellow squash seeds and three cucumber seeds each spring. Still a bit
early, but they'll probably go in next week. In these parts, one must
plant early in order to beat the insects and the mildew to the squash,
which usually succumbs in early summer.

We have much the same problems with insects and mildew. Last year DW
planted tomatoes along the back fence, very close together. Between the
cutworms and the stink bugs we hardly got a tomato off of them. She was
gone one weekend and I took every other plant out, pruned the heck out
of them, and, Lo!, no stink bugs and I could get to the worms. Put a
skewer on the fence and stuck the cutworms on them and the birds had a
feast. After that the mockingbirds were hoping around in the tomatoes
every day looking for more. The redbirds I shooed away as they ate the
seeds out of the tomatoes.