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What to Plant Now - All Things Plants Calendar
Seedlings startedKelly was in a conundrum. She was trying to grow as much as her family and farm animals needed to eat year round, but was having difficulty in finding good, reliable resources on what to plant when, both for spring and for the fall seasons. Part of her challenge was to find what grew well for her climate at different times of the year so she could order seed in time to get everything started correctly.
She was looking for a resource that showed a large variety of plants and when to start the seeds, whether it was indoors as transplants, when to transplant them and when to direct seed in the garden. Our article “Planning and Planting Your Spring Garden” and “How to Plan for Fall and Winter Gardening” helped, but she needed a little bit more.
After she contacted us, we looked at a number of resources and found exactly what she had described. Zone based guides were very general, at best. Other tools and resources had a free trial period, but then had paid subscriptions and were built primarily as design tools, which she didn’t feel she had time for. We had heard of the All Things Plants Calendar that was built by the founder of Dave’s Garden and took a look at it. Based on ZIP codes, it expands on historical weather data and breaks common garden crops down by spring and fall plantings. It also has a very useful, chart based guide for sowing seeds indoors, when to transplant them and when to direct sow seeds in your garden.
While it isn’t perfect, it is a very good step in the right direction of a resource that shows what needs to be known about planting seeds for a specific area. The only caveat we have is the hotter areas of the country, like Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and south Texas. The information is based on a spring and fall season, which is very different in the hot season areas where gardening from September through mid-May is very successful. They advocate starting seeds in December or January and planting cold season crops in January, so if you are in one of these areas, take this into account and it can be a very useful tool for you as well!
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