Food Garden Planting Schedule
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Housebound after a 2 foot snowfall, I took some time today to make a spring planting schedule. It took a literal "snowed in" status to get me to sit down and finally do this. Each year, for the last six years, I've consulted books and websites to determine planting dates for specific food crops. I typically jotted down a smattering of "to-dos" on my wall calendar, but I never wrote up a complete schedule specifically for all my desired crops and their planting dates for an entire season. It takes a blizzard to get me this organized.Here is my food garden planting schedule for spring. It is based on an average last frost date of April 15 in USDA Zone 7.
I came up with this plan after consulting the following information sources:
- Nancy Bubel's The New Seed Starters Handbook
- The University of Maryland Master Gardener Handbook
- Grow It! Eat It! website
- Maryland Home and Garden Information Center's Fact Sheet, "Planting Dates for Vegetable Crops in Maryland
- Southern Exposure Seed Exchange Catalog & Garden Guide 2010
What I hope to do, now that I've got everything down on virtual paper, is to keep detailed notes from season to season, year to year, and adjust planting dates according to my own backyard conditions and microclimate. I also plan to watch for phenological cues--environmental goings-on that provide planting indicators for specific crops (e.g., plant parsnips after daffodils bloom).
My next task is one of geography--mapping each crop to a designated location in my garden.
