Growing Cold Weather vs Warm Weather Crops

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Our First Garden Story

The first year we gardened, we really flew-by-the-seat-of-our-pants and had no idea there was a difference between growing cold-weather vs warm-weather plants.

 

We just got all excited and giddy. We were going to have a garden full of beautiful vegetables. We’d go out to our garden and come in with all the components of a delicious salad, or stir fry.

It was going to be perfect.

Mr. Wonderful dug me about a 3-foot by 6-foot tiny postage stamp of a garden and I quite joyfully sprinkled in a bevy of seeds I had grabbed at my local hardware store.

Keep in mind it was June or July I think, and in Oklahoma, that could translate to roughly anywhere between 80-100º.

Seriously, our state is a wild card at any given moment.

I planted tomatoes.

I planted carrots.

I planted cucumbers.

I planted lettuce.

I planted peppers.

I planted radishes.

I planted peas.

I planted onions.

I planted basil.

I think I may have even planted horseradish (my dad is responsible for giving me this love). One of these days I will try to plant real wasabi. Never mind that I now know I could have only planted about 3 of those plants in that space, I was clueless.

Utterly clueless.

Learning About Gardening

The only thing I think that lived in that tiny first garden was tomatoes and peppers. And I think we harvested them in late October.

I had thrown away my seed packets, having paid NO attention whatsoever to them when planting. I was puzzled.

And upset.

Inside my head I called myself a failure. I mourned over my dead lettuce, radishes, onions and peas. My carrots were miniscule looking little wisps of nothing. I imagined my grandpa, who had instilled the love of gardening in me rolling over in his grave.

Two or three times.

That’s how much of a gardener failure I thought I was.

I was partially correct. You see, I’d done what many new gardeners do. I embarked on the adventure without educating myself.

So I got online and started reading about lettuce. Hmmmm, planting time February 15-March 10th huh? Guess I missed that one.

Onions…ditto.

Peas…same dates.

Radishes – March 1-April 15. Well again, I was two or three months late on that one!

Oh yeah, and I read that lettuce actually bolts which ends up rendering it bitter and icky after it gets too hot, usually above 75º and when nighttime temperatures are over 60º. Since it was currently 90º, I felt pretty doggone silly.

A little further research showed that I should have planted tomatoes and peppers somewhere between April 10-30th.

I’d missed two months of growth! (Insert more berating of self).

Pay Attention to Growing Zones

Hey guess what?

It turns out there are actual Growing Zones for individual regions of the country. In fact, in the US, there are many different ones! And there are sites you can go to like this one or this one and put in your zip code to determine which one yours is.

Turns out mine is 7a. When you buy seeds or plants, you can often determine when to plant by your growing zone.

I also learned that one of our state agriculture universities has actual Extension Fact Sheets for me on their website (click here for Oklahoma). There is a wealth of information on their site of gardening tips from choosing the garden site, to planning the garden, to more.

Also on that link I just shared above, there is a handy-dandy cheat-sheet chart on when exactly to plant both cold and warm weather vegetables complete with dates, spacing of plants, days to harvest, how much soil to cover the seed with and more!

Read Both Sides of the Seed Packet

Each seed packet usually comes with instructions, including how deep to plant the seeds, how far to space them out and other things. If they don’t, do some research. It’s easy to find! Type something in like “how to grow lettuce” (you can find my lesson on that here).

I save my seed packets in a gallon baggie or sometimes, if I’m feeling really spiffy, I take front and back pictures of each on my phone and save them in a folder each year.

I also keep an Excel spreadsheet of my seeds by category for easy reference to order next year. I add the seed, the company, price/packet, and how many seeds came per packet and also my planting and germination date. This way if a seed doesn’t come up, I can look back to see when I planted it and who to request for a refund. Most companies are very good about refunding.

Final Thoughts

These are a few tips on starting a garden and differing between cold and warm weather plants.

As always, keep learning! Try to find a Facebook gardening room for your state/region. The people in mine literally know everything and have been such a huge help!

Friends always think I’m an expert, but the truth is, I’ve learned from the school of hard knocks, and like my first year of gardening and from a lot of failure that caused me to research.

Truly with gardening, you can always learn more!