Learn How Zones, Frost Dates & The Sun Impact Your Garden
This week’s blog covers a few beginner garden tips – we’ll cover zones, frost dates, and the sun – all things that can impact your garden season.
Angie’s Garden Tips – What Is A Zone And How Does It Impact Your Garden?
The first thing I recommend doing when you first start a garden is finding your zone. Your zone is based on where you live and will be useful when reading seed packets or exploring online sites.
Zones are important because you will know what plants you can plant, some plants are perennials in warmer zones, and others are only hardy to certain zones. My first of many tips is – you want to ensure you are buying plants well-suited for your area to increase the chance of success!
The first think I recommend when you first start a garden is find your zone.
Angie’s Garden Tips – Why Frost Dates Are Important
My second beginner garden tip is to know your frost dates. Frost dates, both Last Spring Frost & First Fall Frost will tell you your length of growing season. These dates are critical to having a successful garden.
When reading a seed packet, generally it will tell you the best time to plant, and how early to start inside (X number of weeks before the last frost). If you don’t know your frost date it will make determining what you can plant harder.
Similarly, the first fall frost generally determines the “end of your season“. There are some vegetables like beets, carrots & kale that can survive frost or cold temperatures. The first fall date typically means you should be clearing out your garden and putting it to rest either before or shortly after this date.
Another important number is the length of your growing season. Knowing how long your growing season is will come into play when you are choosing what to plant. Things like onions, brussels sprouts, and potatoes typically need a longer (100+ day) season, whereas things like radishes and lettuces will have a shorter time (~ 50 days) to maturity.
Angie’s Garden Tips – How The Sun Seals Your Gardens Fate
Some of my tips may seem very basic, but when I first started gardening I was overwhelmed with information, thus, this post is covering basic gardening tips! When planning your garden space, take into account the sun, and how much sun your plants need. Things like lettuce prefer more shade than sun and will bolt if the sun is too hot.
There are shade cloths that will help protect your lettuce and other shade-loving plants from the sun. Alternatively, if you don’t want the hassle of shade cloth, you can look into slow-bolting plants – like this lettuce. The shade cloth will help tomatoes survive the heat of the summer, and using a slow-bolting plant will save you the headaches of having to cover them.
Interested In More Beginner Garden Tips?
This is the third blog of a five-part series beginner garden tips series on Angie’s Recipe Garden. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be covering the following topics:
- Planning your garden
- Intercropping
- Zones, Frost Date & The Sun Impacts On Your Garden
- Succession Planting
- Seed Packet Information
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Until the next blog in this series, catch up on my recipes or the previous post in this series on planning your garden.
