How to Decide When to Plant Vegetables in Your Area

Figuring out when to plant vegetables in your area requires a little detective work. In addition to your geographic location, you’ll need to consider a few other variables, as well. For example, the type of vegetables you plan to grow and how you intend to plant them (seedlings, transplants or seeds) will factor into when you should get your crops in the ground, as well.

If you live in an area with distinct seasons, your vegetable growing season will fall loosely between your anticipated frost-free date in the spring and the first hard frost in the fall. Unless you have a crystal ball, it is next to impossible to predict these dates with absolute certainty. 

Fortunately, there are some valuable online resources you can check for general guidelines. A quick online search for “frost-free date” + your geographic area should give you a good idea of when it might be safe to plant in your region.

Starting seeds indoors for an earlier start. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, the published frost-free date for your area doesn’t take into account unexpected late season snow storms or unseasonably cold temperatures. However, if you wait until after the expected frost-free date for your area AND for the daytime soil temperature to reach 65 degrees or warmer, you should be in good shape. If you want to warm up your soil faster, you can cover your planting beds with dark plastic sheets for several weeks prior to planting.

As you develop your garden planting timeline, think of these two important dates as virtual “bookends” around your prime vegetable growing season. However, if you start seeds indoors or protect your plants from cold temperatures with mulch, cold frames, row covers or mini-hoop houses, you can extend your growing season even further. 

Don’t Ignore “Days to Maturity” for Your Selected Plants

As you’re deciding when to plant vegetables in your garden, pay close attention the “days to maturity” information noted on the seed packages or plant markers for the vegetables you’ve selected. This number, which is often expressed as a range of days, tells you how long it will take until that plant is ready to harvest.

Lettuce in raised beds with hoops (Photo credit: Gardening in a Minute)

This is important to know because some vegetables reach maturity much faster than others. For example, radishes, lettuce and baby carrots may be ready for harvest just 30 days after they are sown as seeds. On the other hand, some pumpkin varieties can take a full 120 – 160 days before they reach maturity. 

The “days to maturity” for a particular vegetable variety gives you an idea of how early you need to get that plant into the ground if you want it to reach maturity before your first hard frost date. 

It also tells you how late in the season you can plant certain crops. For example, you can’t wait until late summer in northern climates to plant pumpkins seeds that require 160 days to mature. On the other hand, you can plant fast-growing lettuce varieties with confidence until 30 days or so before your expected last frost date.  

Learning when to plant vegetables in your area is worth the effort. Knowing when your prime growing season begins and ends – and how you can get the most out of it – will make you a much more successful food gardener. It will help you decide which vegetables to grow and how to help those varieties thrive in your garden.

We will be on vacation next week, so will not be posting, but be sure to check back the following week when we'll share 3 important tips that vegetable gardeners need to keep in mind for a successful organic gardening experience!  Have a Happy Memorial Day, and enjoy your beautiful early summer garden!

Planting A Wildflower Garden - Part 2: Choosing Flowers to Plant

Now that your spot is prepared, what types of wildflowers should you plant? You may want to come up with a theme or a certain group of species, or go with what time frames you want your flowers to bloom in. For example, I think it would be a rather nice plan to have a wild-flower garden with a succession of blooms from early spring to late fall.

Let us start off with March, the hepatica, spring beauty and saxifrage. Then comes April bearing in its arms the beautiful columbine, the tiny bluets and wild geranium. For May there are the dog-tooth violet and the wood anemone, false Solomon's seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wake robin, bloodroot and violets. June will give the bellflower, mullein, bee balm and foxglove. I would choose the gay butterfly weed for July. Let turtle head, aster, Joe Pye weed, and Queen Anne's lace make the rest of the season brilliant until frost.

Let us talk a bit about the likes and dislikes of a few of these plants. After you get started you can keep on adding to this wild-flower list on your own as you discover what plants grow well in your area and how they like to be treated.

Hepatica nobilis. Purple form. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is no one who doesn't love the hepatica. Before the spring has really decided to come, this little flower pokes its head up and puts all else to shame. Tucked under a covering of dry leaves the blossoms wait for a ray of warm sunshine to bring them out. These embryo flowers are further protected by a fuzzy covering. This reminds one of a similar protective covering which new fern leaves have. In the spring a hepatica plant wastes no time on getting a new suit of leaves. It makes its old ones do until the blossom has had its day.

You will find hepaticas growing in clusters, sort of family groups. They are likely to be found in rather open places in the woods. The soil is usually rich and loose. So these should go only in partly shaded places and under good soil conditions. If planted with other woods specimens, give them the benefit of a rather exposed position, that they may catch the early spring sunshine. I should cover hepaticas over with a light layer of leaves in the fall. During the last days of February, unless the weather is extreme, take this leaf covering away. You'll find the hepatica blossoms all ready to poke up their heads and bloom!

The Spring Beauty hardly allows the hepatica to get ahead of her. With a white flower which has dainty tracings of pink, a thin, wiry stem, and narrow, grass-like leaves, this spring flower cannot be mistaken. You will find spring beauties growing in great patches in rather open places. Plant a number of the roots and allow the sun good opportunity to get at them, for this plant loves the sun.

The other March flower mentioned is the saxifrage. This belongs in quite a different sort of environment. It is a plant which grows in dry and rocky places. Often one will find it in chinks of rock. There is an old tale to the effect that the saxifrage roots twine about rocks and work their way into them so that the rock itself splits. It is often found in dry, sandy places right on the borders of a big rock. It has white flower clusters borne on hairy stems.

The columbine is another plant that is quite likely to be found in rocky places. The nodding red heads bob on wiry, slender stems. The roots do not strike deeply into the soil; in fact, often the soil hardly covers them. Now, just because the columbine has little soil, it does not signify that it is indifferent to the soil conditions. For it always has lived, and always should live, under good drainage conditions. I wonder if it has struck you how really hygienic plants are? Plenty of fresh air, proper drainage, and good food are fundamentals for plants and for humans!

It is evident from study of these plants how easy it is to find out what plants like. After studying their feelings,  do not make the mistake of huddling them all together under poor drainage conditions.

A small patch of Tiny Bluets (Houstonia sp.). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I always have a feeling of personal affection for the bluets. When they come I always feel that now things are beginning to settle down for the summer. They start with rich, lovely, little delicate blue blossoms. As June gets hotter and hotter their colour fades a bit, until at times they look quite worn and white. Some people call them Quaker ladies, others Innocence. Under any name they are charming. They grow in colonies, sometimes in sunny fields, sometimes by the road-side. From this we learn that they are more particular about the open sunlight than about the soil.

If you desire a flower to pick and use for bouquets, then the wild geranium is not your flower. It droops very quickly after picking and almost immediately drops its petals. But the purplish flowers are showy, and the leaves, while rather coarse, are deeply cut. This latter effect gives a certain boldness to the plant that is quite attractive. The plant is found in rather moist, partly shaded portions of the woods. I like this plant in the garden. It adds good color as long as blooming time lasts.

There are lots of wild flowers I might have suggested, and I won't go through the rest of the season's list here. These I have mentioned were not given for the purpose of a flower guide, but with one intent: to demonstrate the importance of understanding how to study soil conditions for the work of starting a wild-flower garden.

If you are still uncertain, just take one or two flowers and study just what you selected and where they like to grow, and then see how they do in your garden. Once you've seen how these few do, you can add more variety to your garden next year. Enjoy the learning process, and your beautiful wildflower garden!

Planting A Wildflower Garden: Part 1 - Preparing Your Spot

A wild-flower garden has a most attractive sound. One thinks of long tramps in the woods, collecting material, and then of the fun in fixing up a real wild garden.

Many people say they have no luck at all with such a garden. However, it is not a question of luck, but a question of understanding, for wild flowers are like people and each has its personality. What a plant has been accustomed to in nature it desires always. In fact, when removed from its own sort of living conditions, it sickens and dies. That is enough to tell us that we should copy Nature herself.

When you are hunting wild flowers, as you choose certain flowers from the woods, notice the soil they are in, the place, conditions, the surroundings, and the neighbours.

Wildflowers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Suppose you find dog-tooth violets and wind-flowers growing near together. Then place them so in your own new garden. Suppose you find a certain violet enjoying an open area - then it should have the same in your garden. If you wish wild flowers to grow in a tame garden, you must make them feel at home - and that means you need to trick them into almost believing that they are still in their native haunts.

Wild flowers ought to be transplanted after blossoming is over. Take a trowel and a basket into the woods with you. As you take up a few, a columbine, or a hepatica, be sure to take with the roots some of the plant's own soil, which must be packed about it when replanted.

The bed into which these plants are to go should be prepared carefully before you obtain your plants. It is not a good idea to bring those plants back and let them sit over a day or night before planting. They should go into their new quarters at once. The bed needs soil from the woods, deep and rich and full of leaf mold. The drainage system should be excellent. Some people think that all wood plants should have a soil saturated with water. But the woods themselves are not water-logged. If you have heavy, wet soil, you may need to put in some extra work, and dig your garden up very deeply and put some stone in the bottom. Then replace the soil. And on top, where the top soil once was, put a new layer of the rich soil you brought from the woods.

Before planting, water the soil well. Then as you make places for the plants, put into each hole some of the soil which belongs to the plant which is to be put there.

Once your bed is prepared, you are ready to collect plants to fill it, and build your beautiful new wildflower garden!

Be sure to check back next week when we will share some ideas and suggestions for what flowers to plant, and how to choose the right ones for your wildflower garden.