Planning a full-fledged garden doesn’t happen overnight. Everything from the best ways to prep the soil to planting where it goes careful consideration– and maybe no factor is more important than figuring out the timing.
Whether you are just starting out with gardening or an intermediate grower looking to improve, there are ways to plan your planting to ensure optimal growth. You can do a lot of research, soil testing, and sticking to the weather reports – but if you’re looking for a less intense approach, the gardening site Gilmour made Gil an online tool this will take a lot of the hassle out of you and help you plan a successful growing season before you buy your first seeds.
Why garden calendars are important
Plants can only truly thrive in the right conditions, and the plants that will do best in your garden will depend on the type of soil you have, your climate, and the weather in a particular growing season. The USDA has considered and considered all of these factors into this interactive mapthat helps you toPlanting zone.” The different Zones are based on the average temperatures in a given location and the days between the first and last frost. By determining the conditions in your planting zone, you can determine which plants naturally thrive in your area and which may need more help in the form of special soil preparation, additional fertilizer, or other special care.
Once you’ve figured out your zone, it’s time to figure out when to plant. This is where Gilmour’s tool comes in: they have compiled a database of information on various plants to help you create a personalized growth calendar – without getting lost in the weeds and researching everything you want to grow in your garden.
This is how a planting calendar works
Gilmour’s side asks you to enter your zip code first; I entered any postcode in Indiana and learned that it is in zone six, which ends on average, experienced its last frost on April 15th and its first frost on October 15th, giving you around 183 days of growth.
You will then be asked to select the type (s) of plants that you want to grow. The categories are divided into flowers, fruits, herbs and vegetables. You can choose as many as you want, and you must choose at least one to generate the calendar.
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What a planting calendar can tell you
When you choose your plants, the site starts creating the planting calendar. Next to each plant you will see dates indicating when to sow (in this case, “sowing” means to start the growing process inside), to plant (or transplant), and to harvest during the appropriate season. In this particular region of Indiana, for example, growers can start planting blueberries from mid-March to mid-June. Depending on when they are planted, they can then be harvested from mid-June to mid-September. Herbs like rosemary should ideally start growing in January and be ready for harvest by March.
By planning what you will plant and when, you can ensure that your gardening experience is a fruitful one.
