Harden Off Gardens
Everything here is about two dates, and both of them move.
A garden centre sells plants. What it actually sells is timing, because a perfect tomato plant put in the ground on the tenth of April is a dead tomato plant on the twelfth. Here is the entire year on one chart, with our two frost dates drawn on it, so you can see where today sits.
Call 816 555 0166Where we are
- USDA zone
- 6a
- Average last spring frost
- April 15
- Average first autumn frost
- October 15
- Frost free days
- 183
- Latest frost we have seen
- May 6
- Open
- March to November
The planting year
Every bar is the window when that thing can go in the ground here. The two dashed lines are the frost dates. Half of gardening is knowing which side of the line a plant belongs on, and the chart is that in one look.
- Main planting window
- Second window, autumn
- Frost date
We put tomatoes out four weeks before you should buy one
Every garden centre in the country does it, including this one, and it is worth saying out loud rather than letting you find out. From the first warm Saturday in April the benches fill with tomatoes, peppers and basil, because that is the Saturday people want to buy them.
They are not ready. The soil is around fifty degrees and a tomato root does nothing below sixty. A plant set out on the eighth of April and a plant set out on the fifth of May are the same size by June, except the early one spent three weeks sulking and one night in a bedsheet.
Buy them in April if you like. Keep them on a porch, bring them in at night, and put them in the ground in May. Or come back in May and we will still have them, and they will cost the same.
The same thing in words
- Onion setsEarly March to the tenth of April. They want cold ground and they will not mind a frost at all.
- PeasMid March to mid April. Sow them the week the ground stops being a bog and not before.
- PotatoesMid March to the twentieth of April. Traditionally St Patrick's Day and traditionally too early three years in ten.
- Lettuce and spinachLate March to the first of May, then again from mid August to late September. The autumn crop is better and almost nobody plants it.
- Broccoli and cabbageAll of April. They handle a light frost and they hate July, so early is the whole game.
- PansiesLate March onward. The only flower we will sell you before the last frost without a warning attached.
- Trees and shrubsMid March to the end of May, then mid September to mid November. Autumn is the better half and it is our quietest season, which tells you something about how people buy trees.
- TomatoesFirst of May to the fifth of June. Soil temperature, not air temperature, and not the calendar.
- PeppersThe tenth of May at the earliest. They are fussier than tomatoes about cold and they never really forgive it.
- Sweet cornMay through to the twentieth of June if you want two pickings.
- Green beansThe fifth of May to the first of July. Sow a short row every three weeks rather than one long row once.
- Cucumbers and squashMid May to late June. Direct sown does as well as transplanted and costs a tenth as much.
- Annual flowersMay into mid June. Geraniums and petunias will take a cool night; impatiens and coleus will not.
- MumsSeptember into the third week of October, and they are an annual here whatever the label says.
- GarlicOctober into early November, harvested the following July. The longest wait in the garden and the least trouble.
Ring before you drive out
What is actually on the benches changes weekly and we sell out of things. Tell us what you are after and we will walk out and look at it while you are on the phone.
Two more pages here: what to do when a frost is forecast and what is on the benches this month.
Call 816 555 0166