Guides

Answers to the questions gardeners actually ask, built on cooperative-extension sources and the climate data for where you garden.

• When to plant garlic in the South

  Three neighboring southern states publish three different fall windows for the same crop. The reason is worth understanding before you pick your date.

• What soil temperature fall greens need

  Lettuce and spinach seed stops germinating well before the weather stops feeling like summer. The number that matters is in the soil, not the air.

• First frost: what to cover, what to harvest, what to let go

  The first frost of the season sorts a garden into three groups. Knowing which group a crop is in saves you a cold evening of covering things that did not need it.

• Putting your beds to bed for winter

  Most of what you clear out of a vegetable bed in November is about next year, not this one. What you pull, and where it goes afterward, is the part that matters.