What YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts, books would you recommend to learn more about gardening?
We're growing tomatoes, beans, strawberries, mint, cucumbers, basil, pepper, carrots, lettuce. Some of these things are dead simple (mint) but other things (beans) are struggling a bit already...
Not sure what state you are in, but ours has a state university agricultural department which is a wealth of information for both home gardeners and smaller farmers which are very specific to that area (climate, strains, etc).
I've also found the Farmer's Almanac a good resource for planting times, soil and water preferences, etc.
One important step with shifting plants from indoors to outdoors is the 'hardening off' process. Basically, plants adapt to whatever conditions they are grown in, and if they start indoors that typically means no wind, a very narrow temperature band (say 60-67ºF in our home) and not a ton of very bright direct sunlight. Move them outdoors with no hardening off period and the plants will suffer, because the cuticle isn't stiff enough (yet) to deal with wind, the hours of direct sunlight will blitz the plastids acclimated for lower-light levels, and the much greater changes in temperatures will shock them.
Hardening off isn't hard... I do it just by moving them inside/outside for a few days before planting. But there are other methods. Check out:
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-harden-off-plants-1402554Yes, starting indoors can give you a jump ont eh growing season, but it's important not to overestimate how great this jump will be. IME it's rarely more than a 2-3 week advantage for most veggies, in part because every time you transplant it will cause the plant to stop growing for a few days. starting indoors does give you an advantage over weeds, as you can move starts into freshly weeded plots and they'll be big enough to out-compete the weeds by the time those show up a couple weeks later.