Image courtesy SproutRobot
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.
