First time gardener. Advice please

[sam20]

This is our first year owning a home and we really want to start a garden. We live in NW Ohio and I'm not sure what the best plants are to grow. We're not a fan of peppers so I really don't want to grow them. I think we are going to do lettuce, corn, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and carrots. Do you have any other suggestions or maybe a reason why some of these are a bad idea? I also want to get some blueberry and strawberry plants. We have a raised garden bed that I want to put those in. 

I guess my first question is how to get started. I know I want to go to our local extension office and have the soil tested. When do I know to plant? Do I start everything off by seeds? I know for the blueberry plants I want to get some that are already started. Do you have any good resources I could check out? I downloaded gardening for dummies on my kindle so I plan to study that. 

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

[pamela]

A local nursery or your extension office probably has a list of planting dates and recommended varieties for your region.

[statlerwaldorf]

I like smartgardener.com. I'm in central Ohio. Peppers are pretty touchy, so I wouldn't feel like you are at a huge loss there. I prefer doing seedlings especially for beginners because I had a little trouble trying to figure out what was the plant and what was the weed. We have field mice that ate my strawberries. Blueberries take many years to start producing fruit.

Tomatoes and corn are super easy. I did Silver Queen corn last year and they turned out really well. Corn does better if you do at least four rows instead of one long row. I haven't done carrots. Zucchini and summer squashes are easy to grow. My broccoli turned out pretty nice last year too. Bush beans are easy and don't require a trellis.

OSU has a lot of information.

[NitaX]

Ditto the others about checking your local agriculture extension for region specific growing conditions. 

For general gardening purposes, I recommend picking up a book like this one - The Ohio Gardening Guide - because it will become an easy reference for you that you'll always have on hand. I live in TN, so I have a couple of books like that for my region.

For veggies, I use the Univ of Illinois garden directory for general crop information. It's well detailed so it's a staple for me even though I'm not in that zone. 

For tomatoes, I wouldn't suggest trying to start them from seed. I've had better luck buying plants. I hear cucumbers are easy to start from seed. But, they don't like to be transplanted. (I found this out the hard way). If you start cucumber seeds, start them in one of those biodegradable peat pots. I've never had a problem starting carrots from seed. The seeds are tiny, so keep that in mind when handling them.  

[pamela]

NitaX, I had the opposite experience with carrots. I think something keeps eating the tender sprout as soon as they break ground.

For squashes, I've had luck direct sowing, but I've also only gardened in the south. Pay attention as to whether you get seeds for a bush or vining variety and plan accordingly. A vining plant needs a ton of space or a trellis of some sort. I know with zucchini you need at least 2 plants because they need to cross pollinate to produce fruit, I don't know if it's the same with cucumber. Corn is similar (which is why statlerwaldorf suggested multiple shorter rows, to encourage cross-polination).

Tomato transplants are different than any other plant in that you want to plant them DEEP. Everything else you transplant so that the new soil line ie equal with the old. With tomatoes, trim off all but the top set of leaves, then bury it deep enough so that those leaves are just a couple of inches off the soil. Tomatoes sprout new roots from those hairs on their branches so burying them deep helps them develop big enough roots to support a large plant. If you can't go deep enough, you can bend the stem sideways without breaking it to get it all underground. I'm doing half of my tomatoes from seed right now and I'm having to do this over and over as I step them up in pot size until they are big enough to go in the ground.

Just do lots of reading, especially for your particular area because what works in one doesn't work in another. And try to start small and work your way up so you don't get burnt out by trying to maintain something too big while you're still working out the kinks in your environment and habits.

[sam20]

Thanks. I went to the OSU extension office and they are sending me a soil testing kit as well as some information. Thanks for all the information as well.

Last question (maybe), what do you guys do about animals getting into the garden? We have a pretty big stray cat population as well as rabbits. My FIL suggested fox urine for the rabbits. Wasn't sure if there was anything else that could be done for that.