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A Garden-Season Calendar
On this page you’ll find helpful information on improving the soil in your vegetable garden, keeping your yard free of harmful plant pests and diseases, and avoiding problems that affect the nutrition and health of vegetables you grow to eat, including:
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- The annual cycle of soil and land stewardship.
- Garden tasks performed in spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
- Why plants sometimes fail and how to avoid diseases and prevent garden pests from infesting your vegetables.
- Variations in care and timing garden plantings and harvests due to regional differences.
Annual Stewardship of Vegetable Gardens
The second of the two garden seasonal cycles governs garden care throughout the year [see Gardening Seasons and Cycles] and requires the full year to complete. It is called the Stewardship cycle.
For now, let’s assume that your garden is one of the many in which a cold winter is followed by a moderately long growing season, even if your garden is an exception.
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With millions of gardens and gardeners spread across the continents, it’s difficult to generalize about the precise timing of garden-care activities. The order of tasks, though, is the same no matter where you live.
Those in short-season areas must compress their outdoor gardening efforts into a few short months. Depending on the severity of their winter, they may need to start their plantings indoors or use season extenders to keep plants alive during the first autumn frosts.
On the other hand, those in near-tropical regions have the luxury of year-round gardening, sometimes with the benefit of two or more harvests.
The Stewardship Cycle
You’ll want to know the flow of caring for your garden in each season: spring, summer and autumn. Read on by clicking on “Read More” to learn how a typical garden calendar shapes up:
Spring
During late autumn, you put your vegetable garden to bed for the winter. Now, after the last hard frost, the gardening season begins. Days of sunlight grow longer, air temperatures warm but nights remain cool. Soil temperatures take several weeks to rise before the garden’s beds are ready for planting cool-season vegetables.
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- As soon as the soil becomes workable, turn the manure, compost, and mulch you laid down the previous autumn.
- If you wish, add a bit of fresh compost before digging. It will boost the amount of available nitrogen and add organic matter to improve the soil’s texture. Mix them thoroughly into the top 12–16 in. (30–40 cm) of soil.
- Rake the planting soil, forming rows, furrows, hills, mounds and moats as needed.
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- Next, install plant supports.
- Repair pathways and edgings as needed.
- Build new raised beds or repair existing beds.
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- Purchase seeds at your nursery or garden retailer and get them started in a cold frame, in a greenhouse, or indoors. Even though the soil is workable and the weather warming, they will need several weeks’ head start before conditions are right in the garden for transplanting.
- Resist any urge to plant in too-cold soil or fungal disease may rot starchy seeds and kill the young seedlings. Instead, monitor the soil temperature closely, using the information provided for each vegetable you’ll plant [see Vegetables], and plant when it warms.
- Plant disease-resistant varieties of cool-season vegetables first as seed or transplant seedlings. These are the quick-growing species of leafy greens, many root vegetables, some peas and beans, radishes, carrots, and the cole vegetables—cabbage and its relatives, cauliflower and broccoli.
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- Throughout the entire growing season, provide adequate watering, inspect your garden on a daily basis, and fertilize your plants monthly.
- Mulch beds heavily with weed-free straw once the plantings are established.
- Limit early pest problems by setting out each type of vegetable as multiple plantings in several different garden locations.
- With longer hours of sunlight, the garden’s soil soon will be warm enough to plant warm-season vegetable crops. These include corn, southern peas, drying beans, squash, pumpkin, tomato, and sweet potato.
- Warm-season vegetables need higher soil temperatures than cool-season varieties, plus substantial warmth throughout their long growing season. Plan to start them indoors from seeds or purchase transplant stock if you live in a short-season area.
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- At about the same time you are planting warm-season vegetables, the first cuttings of young lettuce, radish, and green onions should be ready to harvest. They will be followed in short order by English peas, spinach, rhubarb, asparagus, and the early berries.
Summer
The solstice marks the beginning of summer gardening, the peak production season. This solar event marks long days and the start of many frequent and continuous days of heat. You’ll see growth spurts in many vegetables, including corn, pumpkin, squash, sunflower, and melons. It’s not unusual for foliage on vining plants to extend an inch (25 mm) or more per day during this time. While it is the most productive time of the year, summer also requires the most diligence.
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- Many leafy vegetables such as spinach begin to bolt, so replant with slow-bolting varieties you’ll harvest in autumn. It’s also the right time to plant pumpkins to ripen for Halloween and Thanksgiving.
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- Water regularly—twice a day if necessary—and continue fertilizing monthly. Search the garden for pest and disease conditions daily and treat at the first signs of damage. Harvest all crops at the peak of ripeness and process or freeze those you’ll store for later use.
- Summer heat aids flower formation in fruiting vegetables. That ensures that they’ll set fruit. Those in very warm climates should protect most vegetables from high temperatures during summer. Stunted plants lose their blossoms or fail to set fruit.
- Mulch heavily around low-growing crops to prevent weed growth and to protect them from insect damage.
- Stake or cage tomato plants, train pole bean vines up vertical supports. Also provide supports for melon, pumpkin, and squash to avoid direct contact of their fruit with the soil. Prevent birds and small mammals from damaging vegetables by spreading nets and installing fences.
- In early summer, harvest peas, beans, late berries, drying onions, garlic, and shallot. In midsummer, harvest peppers, corn, beets, carrots, summer squash, tomatoes, tomatillos, amaranth, parsnips, and salsify.
- In late summer, harvest peanuts, potatoes, peppers, summer melons, late corn, popcorn, sweet potatoes, drying beans, and southern peas.
- Set out harvested peas, beans, corn, and peanuts to dry in a warm, protected location. After 10-14 days, package and freeze the cured crop and store them in a cool, dry, dark spot with good air circulation.
Autumn
As the calendar pages turn, days will grow shorter and the heat of summer will pass. Plant growth will slow, flowers will stop setting fruit, and their fruit will ripen for harvest. The last succession plantings of the season, for autumn and winter crops are planted early in the season.
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- Plant autumn-harvest crops, including rutabaga, turnip, kale, salsify, beets, and leafy green vegetables.
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- Harvest pumpkin, winter squash, gourds, late potatoes, and winter melon. Tomatoes and cucumbers usually will yield fruit until their vines are killed by frost.
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- As plants die, remove and compost them. Composting removes disease and insect problems from your garden.
- Remove and store vertical stakes, cages, and trellises once the plants are gone.
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- Hard frosts will kill annual plants. Uproot them, remove all debris from their beds, and fertilize the soil with manure or compost. Dig it in before the freeze hardens the soil, taking advantage of those last warm afternoons.
- Mulch the surface of all areas that need protection from freezing temperatures, including any that still have plantings of overwintering perennials, such as asparagus and cane berries. When heavy rains or snows fall, your garden will be prepared to rest for winter, its manure and mulch slowly decomposing to enrich the planting beds’ soils.
- Clean, sharpen, and, if necessary, paint and repair all garden equipment and tools. In cold-weather climates, replacing tools at this time of year can be a bargain.
Your Garden and Region
There are many variations to this sequence, depending upon where you live [see Regional Tips]. Adjust the schedule to fit the area and conditions in which you live.
Seasonal Garden Care
Regional differences change the timing and methods used to grow vegetables in a home garden.
The regional differences in how gardens grow mostly stem from the location of the garden on the planet, the garden’s elevation, and local influences of nearby hills or mountains and lakes, other bodies of water or the ocean.
These factors affect the amount of sunlight your vegetables will receive at different times of the year, how winds modify temperatures and humidity, and the length of the garden season.
The farther one is away from the equator, the longer days are in summer and shorter in winter, factors that increase or reduce the amount of light your vegetables receive.
The higher in elevation one goes, the cooler the conditions, and the longer that vegetable seeds take to germinate and mature.
A garden located at sea level near the United States-Canada border experiences about the same daily temperatures as one located at 5,000 ft. (1,524 m) near along the United States border with Mexico.
Always factor regional location differences and factors they change into your garden timing and care cycles.
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