What's Your Extension?

We have had snowstorms this last week in Utah so I wonder if our growing season is going to start late like it did last year. There are a couple of things that we do to determine when we might be able to start planting our vegetables. First of all we keep a garden journal.You can read more about journals here. One of the things we record in our journal is the planting dates, maturation dates, and end of season dates. This helps us to remember when we planted in previous years, and also how well it worked for us.

We like to plant new vegetables each year and our journal doesn’t help us with new plants. When we run into the situation where we have never planted something before, we search out the information from our local extension office. Dale wrote a great article on extensions here. Local extensions are extremely valuable to backyard farmers. I wanted to find out planting dates for kohlrabi this year and I found this awesome PDF from Utah State University that gives general planting dates for a large variety of vegetables, and it shows some suggestions on what will do well in my area.

You might wonder how to find your local extension. If you go to this USDA website you can click on your state and find your local extension. I would use them as much as you can as the information they provide is extensive, and specific to your area.

I hope to be able to start prepping our garden this weekend as some years we start beets, radishes, spinach, and other greens by mid march. It has snowed recently so I don’t know for sure if the ground will be dry enough to start in the next week. We will do a post on checking to see if soil is ready to plant soon.

Have you started your garden yet? What have you done?

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