Choosing The Right Vegetable Varieties For Your Area - A Beginner's Guide
There are so many different varieties out there - how do I decide what to plant based on what region of the country I am in?
[caption id="attachment_70" align="alignleft" width="288" caption="Growing organic vegetables is a rewarding experience when the correct varieties are chosen for your specific area. "][/caption]
Looking through a seed catalog can be a beautiful, exciting, and overwhelming experience for the beginner gardener. There are so many varieties to choose from! Everything looks so interesting and mouth-watering and you can just imagine yourself harvesting baskets of amazing tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, beets, corn... However, before you get carried away, there are a few things you'll need to know about choosing varieties that will grow successfully in your area - what your growing season is, what days to maturity are, and special weather considerations for your specific area.
I hear about Zones and plants all the time - Don’t I need to know my Zone?
Zones are useful to know when you are dealing with perennials - plants that grow back every year and do not need to be re-seeded. When dealing with perennials, gardeners use zone maps to learn where permanent plants can grow. Perennial plants must tolerate year-round conditions, such as the lowest and highest temperatures and the amount and distribution of rainfall.
Since the majority of vegetables we sell are annuals (they only grow for one season), we don’t use Zone information too often in our vegetable descriptions. Instead, we recommend using information called the growing season and days to maturity.
What is my “Growing Season?”
Your growing season refers to the average amount of frost-free days that you have to garden in each year. To determine this, the first thing you’ll need to do is find out the predicted last frost date in the spring and the predicted first frost date in the fall for your region. With this information you can establish:
- when you can start planting outdoors,
- when you can no longer plant outdoors, and
- how many frost free dates you have in your growing season.