When to Start a Vegetable Garden – Best Time to Plant a Garden?

What is the best time to start a vegetable garden? Of course, the answer is that it depends. It depends on what the crops are and what part of the country you are in. Let’s break it down and get the answer for when is the best time for you to start a garden.

First, you should have an idea of what the Hardiness zone is for your area. You can easily go here to look up your hardiness zone by zipcode. That hardiness zone is based on average lowest temperature for that area, which corresponds roughly to the average last frost date for your area. The most foolproof way to determine when to plant individual plants is to look on the seed packets for the hardiness zone for your area.

Another way of determining a good date is actually basing it off the last frost day. This can be found at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/freezefrost/frostfreemaps.html . Here is a direct link to a high res jpeg of the map of the US

Once you know the average last frost date, determine what kind of crop you want to plant:

Cool Weather Crops – These tolerate cold fairly well, and can even take a frost in stride. This includes the kale crops (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc.) along with onions and garlic. Many types of lettuce and spinach fall into this category. If the ground’s not frozen and can be tilled it’s likely late enough for these go into the garden, but a good rule of thumb is as early as a month before the last frost date.

Tender Crops – These don’t tolerate a frost, and need protection, but will grow in cooler temperatures and can be set out within a couple of weeks of the last frost date.

Warm Weather Crops – These not only don’t tolerate a frost, but need warmer weather (often 70 degrees or more) to grow anyhow, so there’s not much advantage to trying to put them out early. Tomatoes, peppers, corn, okra, eggplant are examples of these.