Planning Your Spring Gardens.

So I was talking to a dear friend recently about her getting her plants started for her garden in the upcoming weeks. And she wanted to pick my brain a little bit more, so really this post is for her. And any of you that want to pick my brains about plant stuffs.

If you are thinking about starting your own plants inside this spring, whether vegetables, flowers, or both, this is meant to help you launch that endeavor, and hopefully make it successful! You may find yourself thinking,  "Yes! I would love to! ...But I have no idea where to even begin!", so here you go.

Planning your garden and planting dates
I am not an "A" type person. I don't make a lot of detailed plans for anything. But one thing I do plan, is my garden. Not only where to plant what, but WHEN to plant what. So here's some things that I find helpful.

First is to pick an approximate planting week. This will vary greatly, by where you live, weather conditions for the year, and so on. If you are living anywhere in the large state of Utah, I like to use this page from USU. If you don't live in Utah, don't worry, you will probably find yourself on the list as well! How handy! Global Freeze Dates . It is linked to the Utah, page, but you can change the location in the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Now why is this handy?  Because my dear budding gardeners, it helps give you an approximate, or average for the last spring freeze in your area. This will greatly impact when you want to start setting out plants, getting them actually planted in your garden, and most importantly, when to start them indoors.
For my area, the average last freeze is the first week of May. My goal is to have my garden ready, and start putting plants in it around May 11th. I picked that day for a couple reasons. Firstly, if the last freeze comes early, great! I can bump my planting day up to the weekend before. If it comes a little late, I can move it back a week or two as necessary. I'm hoping the latter does not happen. But if it does, so be it. So now, you should have a goal week in mind for when you want to plant.

Your goal week, will now become your Week 0. This is the baseline you will use to help you figure out when to plant things.
This is an excellent article that explains this idea a little bit more. She also has a small reference chart as to when she starts certain seeds, as well as other factors that can influence your start week (Week 0). When to Start You Seeds.
Here are a couple of other reference charts for when to start your seeds. This one, is by temperature, so it works a little bit better for a general guide, no matter your location. When the outside temperatures reach a certain level an stay there pretty consistently, you know which seeds to get started. Seeds by temperature. 
This is an excellent article from the USU Extension office on vegetable varieties that do well in Utah, sources to buy them from, and at the very bottom is a chart on planting all of them. The  column labeled "Weeks from Seeding to Transplanting" tells you how far back you count from Week 0 to start your seeds. Home Vegetable Garden
If you are looking more at flower seeds, here is a starting list of what you can plant directly into your flowers beds, and some that do better being started indoors. Annual Flowers from Seed.
I believe that in the right hand column of the page, it suggests to start the plants it lists 6-8 weeks before you want to plant them outside. If you are looking further down that same column, the tender annuals list can mostly be started indoors 4-6 weeks before your planting date, if they aren't under the 6-8 week list. Hopefully that makes sense!

Now you get to do one of my favorite parts, go pick out your varieties of plants and get those seeds ordered/bought!

I'm planning on doing a follow-up post shortly on how to care for your seedlings, and ways to grow them.  I'm also thinking of doing a sort of Garden-follow-along with my own garden to let you, as my readers and friends see what I'm doing, planning on doing, and hoping for. Thoughts on that? Helpful? Not helpful? To overwhelming? Please share!