Beginner Gardening: Newbie here - need advice, 0 by worlie

worlie wrote:
This is my first year growing a veggie garden and I have 4 - 4x4 raised beds and a whole bunch of pots and 5 gal. buckets on my deck. Plenty of sun and we water every day with water pumped up from the lake we live on. My attempts at growing lettuce, peas, a few different herbs, broccoli, and zucchini have not been very successful. I think mainly because some things, like the broccoli, I didn't start early enough in doors, but others like the lettuces (black-seeded Simpson and Mesclun) have been overheated and rather anemic-looking. So I tried again inside and started more seeds under grow lights in a 72-cell seed starting kit from Burpee with the self-watering mat, etc. They're all growing like crazy but now I need to get them into pots or the ground and I'm worried the heat will still be too much for them. We are in Indiana, near Cincinnati. The peas are being supported by chopsticks and are now taller than the chopsticks and I bought a pole bean/pea tower to put in a little plot on the side of the house we have not planted yet (it has had potatoes in it previously) but we have not added manure to it like the deck garden. Everything on the deck has a mix of 1/3 composted horse manure, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 potting soil. I think my first peas did not like the horse manure in my soil so I'm trying again with less amended soil. Anyway, I know this is long but I want to try again with another fall planting and I'm learning from my mistakes - any advice would be much appreciated. I have lots of other questions, but maybe I should post separate threads for those to not be so lengthy.