Posted in Hitting Paydirt
Do you know your gardening zone? If you are ready and itching to get your garden started, pull out your calendar and check out this map of the Northern Hemisphere (further down the page, our UK and Australian friends can find your maps). All the way at the bottom is a zip code finder, narrowing your search even more exactly.
The reason you need to know your zone is so you can determine your "last frost date". Circle that day in red Sharpie and start planning your attack!
After you have the last frost date marked, start counting backwards: two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight. This information is key because you want to start your indoor seeds at just the right time so the transplants are ready to move outdoors on the last frost date. For instance, we love to grow peppers. Sweet and hot, peppers are little gems that add a lot of satisfaction to our gardening. I start pepper plants from seed and according to the seed chart, I need to plant those seeds eight weeks before my last frost date, which for my zone is April 21. So I take my red Sharpie out and circle February 24 as my pepper seed starting day.
This kind of calendaring is fun to do; the anticipation of a fun planting day can tide you over on those drizzly cold winter afternoons when it seems spring will never arrive. You know it's coming...you see the red Sharpie on the calendar!
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Denise Burns is the wife of Mike and the mother of Cooper, William and Eston. Their family farm website is Burns Best Farm and she blogs here at Homestead Blogger at a blog by the same name. She's planting her first potatoes ever this week.
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