About Our Garden Experience
When I share information with someone, I always like to give them some background so they can decide for themselves how much they’re willing to trust me. I actually wrote an article titled Can I Be Trusted. To learn further about me, be sure to read the “about us” page.
I grew up helping my grandparents in the garden, and then when I was 14, my sister and I helped an older gentleman in the area with his massive garden. The garden was large enough that he and his wife canned their food for the year, sold to the community, and also were able to sell to a grocery store! It made for some long hot summers, but it was educational to say the least. In 2004, my husband and I decided to start our gardening journey after getting married the previous fall, and we have been gardening ever since. We have gardened in zones 7a, 6b, 6a, and for two weeks during a previous winter, we had temperatures equal to that of zone 5b! However we currently live in zone 6a, if you’re wondering. We have gardened in flat, rich, rock free soil; hilly red clay of the ozarks that we turned into rich garden ground; and now are gardening on a steep, soil-less slope that sits on top of shelf rock on a ridge in the ozarks. This piece of ground has been quite challenging as we have to build it up year after year. Prior to living on this challenging ridge, we have always been blessed with being able to garden in ground, unfortunately this property has caused us to learn to garden in raised beds. Oh well, it’s where God has put us for now, and we are persevering through.
With all that, now let’s get on with the 5 Simple Beginner Steps to Planning Your Garden! These steps will explain and help you understand about frost dates, length of growing seasons, days to harvest, and how to choose your crops. Plus I have a freebie or two for you.
Step 1: Finding Your Frost Dates
When it comes to growing your annual vegetable garden, knowing your first and last frost dates is very important. You can do an internet search like “frost dates for ‘city, state'” or you can visit https://www.plantmaps.com or https://frostdate.com or https://garden.org/apps/frost-dates or https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates
The frost dates tell you the average date of the last light freeze in spring and first light freeze in fall. A light freeze is when temperatures are between 29-32 degrees F and kill most tender plants. A moderate freeze is when temperatures are between 25-28 degrees F and kill or is highly destructive to most plnats. A severe freeze is when temperatures are 24 degrees F or lower and causes the most unrecoverable damge to garden plants.
Please note that these frost dates are only an estimate, there are times when they come later or earlier than predicted.
Step 2: Determining the Length of Your Growing Season
Determining the length of your growing season is VERY important. You NEED to know how long you will have fair weather for your annual crops to grow and produce. In order to figure this, you must know your first and last frost dates. To figure the length of your growing season, count the days between your last frost date in the spring to your first frost date in the fall. It’s that easy. Here’s mine for an example. My last frost date in the spring is April 16 and my first frost date in the fall is Oct. 28. When I count the days between, starting with day 1 being April 17 and the last counted date being Oct. 28, I find that I have 194 days of a growing season. This means I have 194 days for my seeds to germinate, grow, produce harvestable sized produce, and mature enough to save the seed inside the produce or set seed if they flower that year.
Note, if you do not want to look on the calendar and count your own days between the frost dates to determine the length of your growing season, https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates not only gives you your frost dates but also does the counting for you and tells you how many days your growing season is.
Step 3: Choosing Crops Based on Days to Harvest
When choosing our crops for the garden, we need to look on the back of the seed packet. It will say how many “days to harvest.” So for me, my growing season is 194 days long, however I pretend I only have 180 days, this counters a surprise early frost date. As long as the seed packet “days to harvest” is less than 180 days, I know I can confidently grow and harvest that produce. Something to note though is that some plants like tomatoes and others require a lengthy “days to harvest.” if you find that your seed packet “days to harvest” is close to the length of the growing season you have, you may choose to start the seeds indoors or choose a variety with fewer “days to harvest.” Most people in my area start their tomato plants indoors around February. I am not a fan of indoor seed starting, so instead I select varieties that have a shorter “days to harvest.” I have found Abe Lincoln; San Marzano; and Currant Sweet Pea tomato to be varieties that I can sow the seed directly in the ground in mid to late May and get a wonderful harvest off of before our killing freeze hits.
Step 4:The FUN Part, Choosing WHAT to Plant
Now that you know how many days you have of a growing season, you can choose seeds that fall within the window of the “days to harvest.” However, that does not mean you can grow anything that falls within that window. Here are some tips:
1: Choose plants that will grow in your area or your climate. If you’re in northern Idaho, okra probably isn’t a great idea for you to grow. You’ll most likely have to grow it in a hoop house or green house and probably baby it. However, you could grow cool crops a lot easier with less work than someone from the southern states.
2: Choose crops that your family will eat. We do not like eggplant, so we do not grow it. Yes, it’s healthy, but we do not like it. I should clarify the “we” which is me.
3: Choose crops for the space you have. The current property we garden on is the least amount of gardening space we have ever had, so we need to get the most out of our space. We also grow a large variety of crops, but since we’re limited on space, we cannot grow everything we want any more in the quantities we would like. In order to make up for this, a family in a neighboring town grows tomatoes and sells to people. Each year, when I plan my garden, I call them and make sure they are still planning on growing and selling tomatoes. Then I use the space I would’ve used to grow tomatoes and instead grow our year’s supply of okra. Don’t get me wrong, we still grow a few tomato plants for fresh eating, but we buy our bulk canning tomatoes from them.
4: When thinking about what crops grow best in your area, also consider if they are cool weather crops or warm weather crops. Back to the first tip, okra is a warm weather crop and spinach and peas are cool weather crops. Cool weather crops are able to tolerate and still thrive in cooler temperatures, unlike warm weather crops. While cool weather crops will grow, thrive, and produce, warm weather crops grown in cooler temperatures will be stunted and slow to produce. The same is true if growing cool crops in warmer temperatures. Where I live, I can grow cool weather crops such as lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, etc. but some years it is quite difficult since we have very heavy spring rains. By the time the rain is over, it is instantly hot and only gets hotter. Because of this, many people in my area also start their cool crops (primarily brassicas) indoors to get a jump start on their growth. I personally do not like to start plants indoors, so I choose varieties that are slower to bolt, so I can continue to harvest from them even as the temperatures warm up. I have found Di Cicco broccoli; Slobolt lettuce; and Amish peas hold up to our heat longer than others.
Different Types of Seeds
This is not a step in garden planning, but I thought now was a good time to mention about the different types of seeds. Knowing about heirloom; open-pollinated; hybrid; and GMO seeds is very important for seed saving. If you are unfamiliar with these terms and what the word organic actually means, here’s a past article I wrote explaining it.
Step 5: Laying it Out and Keeping Records
The last and final step to planning your garden is deciding where to put everything and keeping proper records of your garden. There is quite a bit that goes into laying out your garden, which I am not going to cover in this article. Instead, I have a Gardening Journal.The journal includes all the information I have shared so far with additional information as well as laying out the garden design, things to consider, and lists of other things you may want to learn. The gardening journal includes that information plus a variety of record keeping forms and journaling pages where you can log your garden start to finish and have a complete record to refer back to the next year.
FREE
To supplement the Gardening Journal, I created 11 pages of charts as a Garden Planning Guide. These charts include a variety of crops and each crop is noted whether it is a warm or cool crop; how many you can plant in a square foot; how tall the crop gets; when to start the seed indoors; when to transplant; when to direct sow; companion and non-companion plants; days to germination; days to harvest; and more.
That's It! Have fun!
There it is, 5 simple steps to planning your garden, plus a couple helpful documents for you! Enjoy getting your hands dirty!
NEXT STEP: Read this article for your next step.
