When to Plant Your Vegetable Garden

Below is a list of common garden vegetables and a general idea about when they should be planted. For specific planting information in your zone, check with your local extension service office or your local nursery/greenhouse. Remember, tender plants that are set out too early will need to be protected if a late cold snap comes along. Be prepared for that with plenty of mulch or other things you can cover your plants with to keep frost away from them. If you aren't prepared to protect early plants, it is better to wait until your last expected frost date to set out tomatoes and peppers. You should wait until then to plant beans, squash, melons, and tender annual herb and flower seeds, too. They need warmer soil temperatures to germinate properly.

How to Cover Plants (frost)
Some things you can use to cover plants with in case of impending frost are old bed sheets, plastic sheeting, individual garden "hotcaps", cloches, or anything that will help hold in heat from the ground and keep frost from settling on tender leaves. Sheets need to be held above the plants a little so they don't rest on the plants and break them. Some stakes or dowels positioned near the plants and under the sheets will hold them above the plants. Leaves, grass clippings, straw, or hay are great to have handy as mulch around the plants anyway, and you can just pull some extra mulch up over the plants to protect them from a light frost.

One of my favorite things to use on the earliest plants I set out are clean milk jugs with the bottoms cut away. Anchor them by pushing them into the soft soil around the plant, and keep the lid. Take the lids off during the day to allow air circulation and heat build-up from the sun to escape through the opening, and replace the lid in the evening to retain the heat from the ground. You do need to be diligent about removing the lids and replacing them, or you'll end up with cooked or frozen plants, depending on the weather. For small early plants, I sometimes use 2-liter soft drink bottles with the bottoms cut away. And when I run out of those, I use a glass mason jar upside down over the baby plant. Glass jars must be carefully removed every morning, or intense heat will build up quickly.

EARLIEST SEASON:
Here is a list of cool weather crops you can direct seed in your garden as soon as you can work the soil in the spring.

• Spinach
• Peas, sweet or edible pod types
• Lettuces
• Radishes
• Kale
  
  Spinach actually germinates best at soil temps of about 40-45 degrees.
  Peas, lettuces, radishes, and kale will germinate as soon as the soil reaches the correct temp for them.
• Note: The more organic matter you have in your garden soil, the earlier it will be ready to work in the spring. Heavy clay soil retains spring moisture and often is unworkable clumps of mud for weeks past an early planting schedule.

EARLY SEASON:
These coles should be small transplants that have been started indoors. Generally, as soon as lettuce and peas are up, you can start the cole seeds in a protected seedbed outdoors.

• Broccoli plants
• Cabbage plants
• Cauliflower plants
• Brussels Sprouts plants
• Chard seeds

• Onion sets and onion plants
• Potatoes
• Beet seeds
• Turnip seeds
• Most Chinese vegetable seeds

REGULAR SEASON:
Unless you have the ability to protect row crops from a possible late frost, wait until the last frost date in your area to plant the rest of your garden. Usually the soil is not warm enough for good germination before then anyway, and you would be wasting seed.

• Beans
• Carrots
• Corn
• Tomato plants
• Pepper plants
• Eggplant plants
• Any other plants or seeds you like
• Melons, Squash, Pumpkins

In the South, you can plant squash and melons with regular season seeds. Farther north, it is best to wait until soil temps are really warm, because squash and melons like hot weather and need warm soil. They are the last seeds I put out in my garden here in southern Indiana, and this IS melon country. It is possible to start them indoors to transplant later, but this can be tricky. Their stems are tender and hollow, and they are difficult to handle. They do not like having their roots disturbed. Melons and squash really prefer to be direct seeded right where they will grow.