Which Veggies Should You Plant Right Now?

Image courtesy SproutRobot

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I’ve been on a vegetable-gardening tear lately. This weekend, I planted lettuce, peas, sweet peppers, artichokes, and tarragon. The only problem: I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I approach the nursery the way most people go grocery shopping: “This looks good. I guess I’ll get it.” I know in the back of my head that you’re supposed to plant certain things at certain times, but I’ve never done any real research.

Turns out there’s an excellent tool for lazy gardeners like me: SproutRobot. Enter your zip code, and it’ll tell you which vegetables you should be planting right now, and for the rest of the season (for a small fee, it’ll even send you personalized planting instructions and heirloom seeds in the mail). According to SproutRobot’s calculations, I was right about the peas, but not the other stuff: I would have had better luck in my Berkeley backyard with beets, carrots, celery, pumpkins, onions, green onions, radishes, spinach, turnips, kale, chard, collard greens, and potatoes.

We’ll see what happens.

 

 

 

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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