Welcome back! The weather is warming up, and we are planning a garden this year. I did a deep dive on studying outdoor gardens and learned many things. There are so many topics, where do you start when planning a garden?
The first thing to know: your area’s hardiness zone and frost dates. The two go hand-in-hand and indicate when your plants can be outdoors. You can’t plant plants when the weather is freezing outside, right? You don’t want your tomatoes covered in snow, right? You must know when the freezing weather starts and ends.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published their first hardiness zone map in 1960, which has been widely adopted around the world since then.
In this system, the world is divided into 13 climates (hardiness zones), which mark the average coldest temperature for your area. Zones 1 through 13 are separated by increments of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. A more detailed label adds “a” and “b” to your zone number, which are increments of 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The lower zone numbers are really cold! The high zone numbers are really hot!
The hardiness zone also defines the average frost dates for your area. You can visit the USDA website to find your hardiness zone.
I live in northeast Kansas and live in zone 6a. The coldest average temperature ranges between −10 and −5 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the average frost date starts on October 11 and ends on April 23.
Amazing! Great! Now I know to plant things between late April and early October.
Your local nursery already offers native plants best suited for your location, but it can be trickier when ordering seeds online. Your hardiness zone is helpful in this situation. Search for seeds by hardiness zone number and you’ll do fine!
After learning about frost dates, directions on seed packets make sense now. Seed packets might say when to start seeds indoors, when to transplant outside, and the last date to plant outside.
They use language like, “plant indoors six weeks before the last frost date,” or something like that. In my case, the last frost date is late-April, so six weeks before that time is mid-March. I will sow this vegetable seed indoors in mid-March.
Again, the Farmer’s Almanac has a wonderful calendar for this purpose. Enter your zip code to see when to plant your plants. The calendar breaks down each vegetable type.
Because of hardiness zones, your friend across the country might start their garden a month earlier than you do and grow different flowers and vegetables. Their advice for seasons and planting might not match yours. So, when hunting for gardening advice, find suggestions for your zone number.
Anyway, that’s step one for planning the outdoor garden. More updates to come!