Planting Schedule Update

My Louisiana sister sent a link to an Old Farmers Almanac web-page that can create a planting calendar by zipcode. The page linked above is for the planting calendar for Marietta (not my town, but the one that the Almanac found). I was happy to see that, for the most part, the OFA agrees with my own standard schedule for most garden plants.

One big exception is potatoes; the OFA lists an April (!) planting date. I use an early-to-mid-March (depending on the weather) planting date for potatoes, and I am not alone in this.

One late February when I was up at Ladd's Farm Supply, I was talking with an old guy, one of the guys who has been growing food for decades in a huge enough garden that it needs a small tractor, who had already prepared rows for his potatoes and was planning to plant them when he got home that day. I remember feeling like a lazy-bones in comparison!

This year it has been so cold that the daffodils are almost a month late in blooming, so the April planting date might not be too far off for this year, but most years planting that late will leave potatoes trying to mature in the heat of July. That just doesn't seem right to me.

The OFA did have some other good news for me, though. It turns out that most of my already planned planting dates are also the ones recommended for people who are planting "by the moon." I know people for whom this is important--they say it really does make a difference, and I am ready to take all the help I can get.