Planting dates

[greenstorm]

Last frost is roughly June 1. Sorting out when to plant:

Plants (weeks to transplant age):

Transplant when cold (May 9/10):
Bunching onion (8 weeks, March 14)
Swiss Chard (4 weeks, April 11)
Parsley (6 weeks, March 28)
Cabbage (6 weeks, March 28)
Swiss Chard (0 weeks - seed)
Peas (0 weeks - seed)

Transplant after frost (May 30/31):
Quinoa (6 weeks, April 18)
Lettuce (6 weeks, April 18)
Cilantro (0 weeks - direct seed)
Parsley (0 weeks - direct seed)
Carrot (0 weeks - direct seed)
Beet (0 weeks - direct seed) (Tried this May 1 - 15)
Parsnip (0 weeks - direct seed)

Transplant when warm (June 6/7) :
Peppers (9 weeks, April 4)
Tomatoes (9 weeks, April 4) (Did these April 1 it worked well)
Eggplant (9 weeks, April 4)
Cucumbers (4 weeks, April 9)
Zucchini (4 weeks, April 9) Edit: do this April 20-25
Winter squash (4 weeks, April 9) Edit: do this April 20-25
Melon (4 weeks, April 9)
Flint corn (3 weeks, April 16)
Beans (0 weeks, seed)

Deck containers, outside when warm, lots of growing space (June 1):
Tomatoes (10 weeks, March 21)
Peppers (10 weeks, March 21)
Melon (10 weeks, March 21)
Eggplant (10 weeks, March 21)

Comments

[yarrowkat]

we are on opposite sides of the universe

by June 1st it is always in the 90s here, often into the low 100s (Farenheit)

i'm amazed you can grow tomatoes and peppers at all! we start ours from greenhouse transplants outdoors around May 5th each year.

it sounds like it'll be a very tasty garden anyway!

[greenstorm]

We really, really are. The third opposite would be a wet tropical area with steady year-round growth.

We max out around 30 degrees most summers outside the greenhouse, the internet tells me that's 86 Ferenheit.

My selections for peppers and tomatoes are very limited, I don't usually buy anything that's over 65 days to maturity, and they mostly need to go in greenhouses. They'll ripen up to two months after frost if picked green before the freeze (or if I just put the whole plant upside-down in the downstairs, hanging).

There is nothing quite so lovely as fresh tomatoes after such an absence though. And our greens are ridiculous, and I sometimes get cabbages or lettuces over 18" across. And nearly every bug or disease is winter-killed. And 17-and-change hours of sun-up daylight (plus a couple hours of twilight either side) really does move things along.

I'm amazed I like it here, but apparently I do?

[yarrowkat]

that would also be an opposite. what with the dry dry dry and the sharp seasons here.

86 is downright balmy. it could be that temp every day of the year and i'd be content, as long as it also cooled off at night. :) except in climates like that, it's usually also wet and buggy, and actually i like it here.

we get winter-kill on bugs some years; other years we have to take action against the plague of grasshoppers in particular. we plant squash after July 4th every year, from seed, to ensure no losses to squash beetles. but the season is long enough that we can take a passive approach to that problem. grasshoppers are much worse. there are 17 distinct grasshopper species native to the Rio Grande Valley and we have identified every single one in our garden. now we use nolobait - three years on, two years off, or thereabouts. it helps quite a lot.

fresh tomatoes are the best! and i like the upside-down plant trick, too; we do that sometimes also. especially for our favorite varieties, or in years when we don't drown in tomatoes - some years, we have so many, we make sauce and can it every couple of weeks for months and then we're tired of it by the end and we let the chickens have the dregs. also all the seed packets on tomatoes say "full sun" but they do not mean here! we plant them in afternoon shade and water them every day, so that they survive.

greens are temperamental here. i have to select for heat-tolerant varietes, and slow-bolting varieties. lettuce mostly is too bitter (dry/hot). peas do well, especially as a fall crop. "america" variety spinach (specifically, and only early in the season, or as a fall crop), chard, beets, kale, and carrots are great. i have never even attempted cabbage, though folks grow them in high-tunnels. last year i had so much spinach that i harvested it in waves and froze it in half-pint bags. now i am eating through the frozen spinach and it is nearly as good as fresh.

we put in our frost-tolerant stuff in late Feb/early March, and pull it all out no later than early June. often we pull the spring crops as we are putting in the summer crops, in early May. one year we still had peas by the summer solstice and we were all amazed. that was a wet year. some years we replant for a fall garden in late August, for an October harvest; other years we are tired and do not. depends on how much help we get with the garden, mostly.

[greenstorm]

Oho! Before I forget: how do you preserve your spinach? Blanch, freeze on a sheet and bag, just toss fresh into the bag? Spinach is such a short season that I prefer "green perpetual" or "perpetual spinach" chard, which is basically the same without going to seed or tasting weird. Unlike normal chards it doesn't have much of a midrib at all.

I really like perennial greens, like stinging nettle, here. They'll come up as soon as the weather permits but not early enough to be damaged, and they're so much less work. We're snowfree usually sometime in April, depending, but the ground is kind of uneven in thawing and the perennials mean I don't need to worry about any of that. The north side of my house doesn't even really thaw till end of May or beginning of June.

(I did a deep straw mulch one year before winter and it insulated the soil and meant my garden thawed much later than everything else. Argh!)

We had bad grasshoppers here last year; in the next town over they said the grasshopper load was equivalent to 1 grazing cow per acre. Luckily the chickens have access to the entire space surrounding my garden and they sure didn't let many past.

I love the idea of planting outside seasons for bugs. There's not time to do it here, but it's a whole new part of time-stacking.

[yarrowkat]

grasshoppers should always be measured in cows, omg. that is hilarious as a unit of measurement but also terrible as an experience.

stinging nettle is vaguely exotic as a green here! it also grows in the high country (i mean upwards of 8,000 feet, in the mountains - places that are snowed in until May or June, like your place).

[greenstorm]

I told my hay person (they got almost no hay/straw off this year, between grasshoppers and weather) that they needed a giant vacuum so I could buy grasshoppers for my chickens and pigs. Such useful protein, but not in our current system.

[yarrowkat]

i hear that a good flour can be made out of them, actually. also crickets. i would probably have problems getting past the squick factor, but i can intellectually see the value. also as bird-food.

[greenstorm]

My chickens love to chase them! I bet the pigs would eat them by the ton, if they could catch them/if they were pre-killed.

I'd have trouble wrapping my head around grasshopper flour too though.