Garden Recommendations

and a Usenet novice too. This is a UK group for DIY not a US gardening group. There is a UK Gardening group and one of its posters also posts here and may know if there is an equivalent US garden group.

Having said that surely you have 'garden soil' already there so why buy more? Or is the soil not soil in your planting areas? You could always top up with manure to enrich what you have.

I don't see the post as off-limits here. We get all sorts of weird questions that invariably get good answers no matter how far-out they may at first seem. This one is nothing unusual.

With gardens, the best thing is to see what neighbours with similar gardens are doing and whether their plants are thriving.

You should really ask on uk.rec.gardening. This is a d-i-y group, more familiar with plumbing, wiring and building things (and nuclear power and climate change, but nobody's perfect!). What I would say is that the climate generally in the US is nothing like that in the UK. In general the US has a continental climate, the UK a maritime one. Yours may be a little more moderate, being near the shore, but you're further north than New York, so I would imagine you get some pretty harsh winters. I see that even coastal Connecticut can sometimes reach

Another point: we tend to use different terms over here. AIUI our gardens are your yards, and our soil is your dirt. You might be better off asking your questions on one of the on-line American gardening groups. Lots to choose from here

As to what you need to do for planting what you've bought, it depends on what your soil is like. Unless it's pure sand, I see no need to buy in soil, but dig over the existing soil so that it's nicely broken up and friable so that young root systems can get a good start in it. Incorporate as much organic matter as you can reasonably get hold of. As well as helping to open up the soil and providing plant nutrients, organic matter helps keep the soil most in dry weather. I don't know what's available in the US, but over here it would be either peat, commercial compost, well rotted manure (never fresh, it'll 'burn' the roots) or garden compost that you've made yourself over preceding years from weeds, grass cuttings and vegetable waste from the kitchen, but you won't have any of that if you've just bought the place. Being right on the shore, I imagine you'll have a plentiful supply of seaweed. Seaweed is great for gardens; it's full of nutrients and trace elements and the organic matter in it improves the soil structure, but it's a bit late to be digging that in now. In the autumn perhaps, ready for next year. Some people compost their seaweed for a few months before using it, but when I've used it, I just pile it on direct from the beach, two or three inches thick! Getting too old for that now: too much hard work hauling sack-fulls off the beach :-(

Although you seem to get a reasonable amount of rainfall in the summer, don't forget to keep the plants well watered, especially when they're young and it's dry and sunny, otherwise they'll just shrivel up.

Not off limits but the OP is likely to get a fuller response in uk.rec.gardening

Tomatoes and squashes love rich composty peaty damp soil warm and moist. #

Onions don't need as much. nutrients or water.

Pee and crap makes good fertiliser, also what we call 'fish blood and bone - ground up bits of fish left over from processing. And any organic matter that's rotted a couple of yeras - leaf mould is fantastic - will help.

There are a few US gardeners who post in rec.gardens, and have a greater experience of North American gardening conditions.

Right. A vast number of novices on here, then. ;-)

That is most certainly correct. See the second paragraph here:

But it isn't the whole story by any means. I visited Nick's garden - which was under a mile from the coast - a couple of times (in fact the first time a couple of months before that article was written), and I was amazed at the variety of plants he could grow there. It's the prolonged high temperatures in summer which seem to help a lot, ripening the wood of trees and shrubs in ways we can only dream of over here. Deciduous woody plants in particular seemed to do very well. Being in frozen soil over winter did them far less harm than being in damp, claggy soil. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure there were plants I would consider zone 8 or possible even 9 which had been growing there for many years.

I think a key point is that US hardiness zones and their temperature limits are mostly not relevant in the UK.

Exactly Chris -- as soon as I read Rob's first sentence with that telling phrase "with no remaining chance of a frost" I thought: what luxury! :-) [Not many people, anywhere in the UK, can use that phrase - ever!]

As others have said Rob -- I wouldn't look in this particular group for advice on gardening, especially in Connecticut. However we can give you lots of advice on whether or not Britain should leave the EU though :-D

And even some advice on DIY! There's a vast fund of fantastic expertise here. But - again - the US equivalent group would be better on that, because of the differences in materials, tools, suppliers, etc etc etc.

Best of luck with your new home: lucky you!

John