When to Plant Your Garden {with a Free Fill-In Planting Chart}

If you’re like me you’ve either already purchased your seeds for your garden this year or they have arrived and you are oohing and aahing over all the possibilities. Along with the excitement, you are trying to figure out when the best time to plant each seed will be. When you have over ten seed varieties that you’re going to sow, keeping all the planting times straight in your mind can be a bit cumbersome.

In the past years, I have just used graph paper or lined paper to write my seed planting times down. This year, Lord willing, will be one of our bigger gardens and so I decided to create a spreadsheet chart with colors and a key to be able to keep track of planting times. With this chart I can capture indoor planting time, germination, outdoor planting time, hardening off time along with length until harvest. It’s really quite handy and I wanted to share it with you to make your planning and planting easier.

How to use the When to Plant Chart

• There are three columns for each month – Beginning, Middle and End. Figure out your average last frost date (if you have winters) and lightly color (colored pencil recommended) the square in the month that your last frost date falls in – whether it is beginning, middle or end of the month.
• On the left side, on each line, write in the item you will be planting.
• Then, in the boxes under the months, fill in the boxes from the date of planting, either indoors or out, and end your color at or around the harvest date. I used a darker color when I had to plant indoors and a lighter hue of the same color for when the plant could be transferred outside. Also, it helped me to use a different color for vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers so I could differentiate at a glance what I was looking at.
• Put and “I” on the first box the color starts if you have to start indoors
• Put a “G” on the appropriate box to tell you approximately when the plant should germinate.
• Put an “H” in the appropriate box if your plant will require hardening off and when to start that process.
• Put a “Pl” in the appropriate box to tell you when to put your indoor seedlings outside.

This can all be done with colored pencil and a black pen. It will be a chart you will refer to time and time again through the planting and growing process!