Am I doing everything right?

Hi.

It's my first proper year growing fruit and veg. We live in a rented house with a decent size garden which is mostly grass and patio with one small border but no real space for growing anything.

I built some moveable planters on casters so I can move them about to make full use of the patio when we have people round in summer. I'm also trying to source a small greenhouse as soon as possible.

My setup is one planter that's just shy of 18" deep, one that's about 8" deep and one that's about as deep as a tomato bag for the tomatoes.

Shallow planter: Alternating rows of french breakfast radish & sparkler radish taking up maybe 50% of the space. Some lettuce leaves taking up most of the remaining space. In a small corner is some dill. I plan to plant radish continuously over the next few months.

Deep planter: About 50% carrots, 50% rainbow chard.

Tomato planter: 50% roma, 50% cherry tomato. The cherries might go in a hanging basket at some point.

Various trays: rocket, chillies and peppers waiting to be transplanted to pots when they're big enough. A strawberry plant, also for a hanging basket.

Herbs in pots: Coriander, Rosemary, Sage, Thyme, all on the windowsill in the kitchen.

And a large pot of onions which were the only thing that survived over winter and seem to be doing ok.

I planted everything about two weeks ago and nothing has sprouted as of yet but I think I see some of the radish starting to poke through. Everything gets full sun most of the day, although it's been fairly grey up here since I did the planting. We planted sunflowers, and judging by how much our paltry attempt at gardening failed last year we only expected two or three to grow. We currently have 21 growing but we'll probably throw most of them away, however the birds were at them right away so I've covered all my planters with some polythene sheet when neither me or the dog are around to keep them at bay. I assume the polythene will let light through and mimic a greenhouse somewhat but will it have any negative effects?

I'm a little concerned about watering. I was watering everything every few days but I read conflicting advice online, particularly surrounding different vegetables. Could anyone give me some concrete advice? I've read that everything needs to be moist, all the time, that you should water when the soil is dry to the touch, that you have to dig down to a spade's depth and water if it's dry down there, that you should water leafy greens more than other things, that you shouldn't shock radishes and carrots with a lot of water at once because they could split.

I imagine the rain will have a big impact on watering, but is it better to cover them and control the watering levels myself? Am I overthinking it?

Edit: Forgot to mention feeding. I have various plant foods, but I haven't put any to use yet.

Any help would be appreciated.

Last edited: 06 April 2017 17:09:20