Gardening can be an excellent hobby and has been shown to reduce stress, improve mental clarity, and prevent disease and illness, as well as allowing for the production of flowers, ornamental plants, and foods. Being a successful gardener requires a lot of planning, learning, patience, and hard work. One of the most important skills for having a successful garden is learning how to time your plantings. Plant too early or too late and you’re not likely to get a good crop. This week, let’s chat about some guidelines to follow regarding the timing of your garden.
Deciding when to plant your garden relies on a lot of factors, including your climate and season, germination needs for different types of plants, temperature ranges in which plants thrive, and your desired harvest period. The CSRA region is located in hardiness zone 7B, which has a last frost date of April 15th and a first frost date of November 15th. This means you can feasibly garden for around 7 months of the year. Learning how to schedule and plan that seven-month period can be tricky, so using a planting calendar may be helpful. There are two major planting periods- spring (March to May) and fall (July to September), which are harvested in June-July and October-December.
The first step to a home garden is to decide exactly what you want to plant, since some plants mature more quickly than others. Sometimes, the easiest option is to google how long it takes for a crop to grow from planting to harvest – for example, pumpkins take between 90-120 days, or to reference the specific seed that you’ll plant. Once you know the timeline to harvest, you can count back to decide when you need to plant. For example, if we want to harvest pumpkins in early October, we should be planting pumpkins right around now. In general, quickly-maturing plants like lettuce, broccoli, and peas can be planted and harvested twice in each growing season, while other slow-maturing plants (corn, tomatoes, peppers) can only be planted and harvested once.
If you know you want to plant two harvests, you’ll need to prepare for that on the front end, getting those crops in the ground as soon as the weather conditions are good enough in the spring, typically April. If you choose to start plants indoors, you’ll need to add even more time to the front end- usually late February and March. Usually you’ll harvest those plants from late May into June, and you’ll have a bit of a break before you re-plant in late August-September for that second cycle, harvesting in October and early November. Trying to plan for two harvests can be tough- late spring freezes can kill off young crops early in the first cycle, while late summer heat and drought can make irrigation critical for the second cycle.
There is an abundance of garden calendars available online which provide month-by-month walkthroughs of exactly when to tackle specific garden chores, plant crops, treat pest issues, and harvest. The UGA Vegetable Garden Calendar (Circular #943) is available online at https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=C943&title=vegetable-garden-calendar#January, or visit our office to pick up a copy. If you have more questions on gardening, contact us at uge3181@uga.edu or 706-359-3233.