🌱black thumb to vegetable bed, in the order it actually happened

zone 8b. not '5 easy vegetables to start with' - the actual sequence i learned in. water first, then soil, then succession planting. skipped steps come back later.

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Water your plants before you learn anything else

Sounds too simple for step one. Deep, infrequent beats daily - killed two tomatoes overwatering before this clicked (learned the hard way).

WSU Extension Yard & Garden hub

Get an actual soil test, not a guess

Sent mine to a lab instead of buying a $12 pH meter. Turned out pH was fine, nitrogen was the actual problem.

Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades - Steve Solomon

This is step four for me, not step one. Skimmed the soil chemistry chapters and read the vegetable-by-vegetable section closely.

Compost bin, finally justified

Put one in after the soil test, not before. Composting without knowing what you're deficient in is a shot in the dark.

Charles Dowding's YouTube channel

OSU Extension Master Gardener program

Succession planting, actually scheduled

Lettuce every 2 weeks instead of one sowing that all bolts the same week. Wrote it on a wall calendar since my phone reminders got ignored.

Fall crops planted on time for once

Brassicas need to be in by mid-September or they don't mature before frost. Learned by missing the window twice.

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