When to Grow: Kitchen Garden Seasons

Cool weather harvest basket filled with snap peas, chard, kale, celery, marigolds, early basil, and spinach.

Dear Gardeners,

Now that you have a list of the foods that you most use in the kitchen, let’s work on figuring out timing in the garden. (If you’ve just stumbled upon this blog, check out the this post for your first assignment!

Take anything you’ve read about the USDA Hardiness Zones and forget about it during our kitchen garden chats. For vegetable gardeners, what really matters for our annual plants are the first and last frost dates, along with the average temperatures each month. If you’re in an area with a nasty habit of unpredictable cold snaps or have a huge swing in temps each day, simple removable protection like sun or frost cloth will come in handy. So before we go any further, figure out your local garden seasons. I’ve included a template in the download below.

When it comes to growing your own veg and herbs, timing is one of your biggest considerations. Lettuce and cilantro are happy greens in cooler temps but will quickly go to seed and lose their sweet charm once it gets toasty. Sad, I know, but also an opportunity to open up the garden space for something new. Cilantro seeds, aka coriander, are also a mainstay in my spice pantry so I invite this circle of life. (Ooh, oooh- check out this IG post where we smoked a small harvest of them.)

I recommend going through your list of favorite and most used produce and labeling each with a season, using the download in the link below, and days to maturation. (Note: “days to maturity” on the seed packets or online is from seed. If you’re transplanting seedlings, subtract about two weeks.)

If you have anything on your dream grow list that I haven’t included, leave a comment below and we’ll get it sorted, literally. 

Growing together,

Kiera