Home Vegetable Gardening: A Gardener’s Calendar

About This Calendar

Basics

The very idea of a gardening “calendar” is arrogant. Nature famously is strong-willed, and commercial growers of decades’ experience can occasionally be flattened by Mother Nature’s steamroller of variations. This calendar, like any such thing, has to be seen as being at best an aide-memoire, a look-ahead reminder of what tasks likely lie in the near future, so they don’t sneak up on us. It is absolutely, positively not a set, reliable framework. Do this on that date is impossible; start thinking about doing this sometime a fair bit ahead of that date is more like what we’ve got here.

Keep in mind that direct-seeding is chancy enough, but that when we start seedlings indoors for later transplanting out, we are arm-wrestling Mother Nature, and besides a strong will, She has strong arms. Not a few brave souls ignore indoor starts, sometimes with remarkable success. On the tomatoes page here, we quote someone—we’ve long since forgotten the source—who observed The neighbor would plant whole tomatoes that were just starting to turn at the first frost. He put them 12 inches deep and he had mobs of plants come up in the early spring. With big long roots. Some people advocate what they call “winterseeding”, which is the same idea as the tomato fellow had: don’t wrestle Mother Nature, dance with her. (There are numerous web pages on the general topic of winter sowing.) Or, simplest of all, scatter seed in late autumn, when most plants normally and naturally drop seed, and see what happens come spring. For most home gardeners, that’s too risky, but it’s worth setting aside a little space and trying it with a few specimens of each vegetable you grow, to see if any do come up in their time with any regularity and vigor.

The entries on this calendar derive straightforwardly—more or less—from the “Timing” information on the various individual-vegetable pages of this site, which should be consulted for explanations of how the dates were estimated. Recall, please, what we said earlier: we are not “master gardeners” and this information is not the result of some vast personal experience—it is derived from extensive review of the literature and examination of local long-term weather tables. Caveat hortulanus.

The weather data used for “typical” temperatures and such was our own 24-year record of daily temperatures in our garden. We are nominally—that is, by the USDA map—a Zone 6b site, but if you review those data you will see that we are perhaps one whole Zone cooler (in good part because we lie in a local “frost pocket”). Moreover, as we say on the Introduction page of this site, it is important to avoid worshipping at the altar of “Zone”, because a Zone number does not tell anyone much of anything about a place save the typical coldest winter temperature; places with the same Zone number can have seriously different climates. We imagine that the information on this site is useful, with only minor common-sense modification, to—at the least—anyone living from Zone 4 to Zone 7, inclusive, and that sure takes in a lot of territory.

As we have said at length elsewhere on this site, you need to use either your own temperature records if you have a set covering enough time (at least two or three years) or you need to get data from your closest official weather station. Then you figure out your frost-free start asnd end dates and your mid-season date and adjust your own seed/transplant dates acordingly. This calendar is what we get for our climate using that approach; it can stand as a rough template, but do your homework using your own data.

Oh, and before jumping in, please do mind the special notes farther below.

Irregular Plantings:

These are vegetable plants that are not simply planted once a season. For these, the dates are not exact: there is a little play in each.

• True Perennials:

  • Asparagus: April 1.

  • Caucasian Mountain Spinach: early winter, say December 1.

  • Kale, perennial (“Kosmic”): spring or early summer, say June 1.

  • Lovage: April 1

  • Onion, Egyptian Walking: “They can be planted any time of the year, even in the winter as long as the ground isn’t frozen or covered with snow, but fall is the optimal time to plant them so they can develop a strong root system.”

  • Rhubarb: Plant roots in early spring. (Make sure the ground has first been well weed-cleared!)

• Self-Reseeders:

  • Salad Burnet: April 5.

  • Purslane: early summer, say May 5; re-sow in mid-summer, or even every couple of weeks, depending on how much you take how often. Take great care to not drop any seeds or cuttings outside its container!

  • Sorrel: April 1.

• Succession-Plant:

  • Cress: lightly broadcast seeds as needed.

  • Lettuce: continually, every (60/n) days, where n is desired days between heads (for example, for a head every 3 days, re-sow every 20 days).

  • Mache (Corn Salad)
    • small-seeded (cool/warm weather): start sowing April 1; re-sow every two weeks till it starts bolting (probably early to middle June).
    • large-seeded (cold/cool weather): start sowing October 15; re-sow every two weeks till the ground freezes.

  • Miner’s Lettuce: lightly broadcast seeds as needed.

  • Radish: start as soon as possible & continue frequently till the ground freezes.

  • Spinach - cease re-seeding when it bolts; re-start August 15.

• Use Part of Harvest to Re-Plant:

  • Scallion: May 1.

  • Shallot: September 8.

  • Sunchoke: whenever the farm first delivers them.

Seasonal Plantings:

Important notes:

• This is only a summary: for each plant, consult the details on its full page here.

• This calendar does not show any harvest-date information; use your eyes and brain.

• This calendar does not yet (eventually—we hope—it will) show dates relating to herbs or to fruits or berries. If you are growing herbs, or anything else, indoors in containers, dates don’t matter anyway.

• Finally and again: these dates are approximations. This calendar is a set of rough reminders, not an exact schedule—consult the various individual-vegetable pages for fuller planning information.

The Seasonal Calendar

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	Web growingtaste.com

• Background Information about the purposes and design of this site
  • Site Front Page
  • Introduction
    • Our Climate—
      • Our Location (USDA Zone Map)
      • Our Daily Weather: Table
      • Freezes & Frosts
      • Our Garden Design
  • An Apologia: why one should cultivate one's garden
  • Deep-Bed Gardening (forthcoming)
  • Container Gardening (forthcoming)
  • Vegetarian and Organic Considerations (forthcoming)
  
  
  
• Recommended Crops for a home garden, by variety
  • Vegetable Varieties
  • Herb and Spice Varieties
  • Fruit and Berry Varieties
  
  
  
• Gardening information and aids
  • Tools and Equipment
    • Garden Tools (forthcoming)
    • Seed-Starting (forthcoming)
    • Colored Plastic Mulches
  • A Garden Calendar
  • Estimated Seed Life in Storage
  
  
  
• Miscellaneous Information of interest to the home gardener
  • Links:
    • Vegetable-Gardening Links
    • On-Line Vegetable Seed & Plant Sellers
  • About Oxalic Acid in Vegetables [now at a site of its own: Oxalic-Acid Information]
  • About Induction Cooking [now at a site of its own: The Induction Site]
  • So Who Are We?
  
  
  

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