Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Best Seed Starting Chart Ever!

Have you figured out when to start your tomato plants indoors? How about the correct date for sowing lettuce outside? Onion sets. Do you know when you can plant them? Is figuring all this out like a huge guessing game and lots of calendar flipping?


Photo Credit: -tiko-


I just about danced a jig around the house when Leslie Boss from Tranquil Acres of Alexandria passed along this Gardener's Seed Starting Chart from You Grow Girl! Unlike most seed starting charts, this one is a free Excel program that allows you to enter your last frost date so that it calculates all the information for you! 



I doubt I really need to go into details because once you click the link and download the Chart, you'll see all you want to know about it, but allow me to praise it's merits just a bit...

• Custom feature allows you to enter your own last frost date
• Twenty five vegetables and three herbs are charted
• Direct sow and seed starting dates are included
• An early and late option is listed for each
• The growth period is given so you know about how long until harvest
• There is a separate column for dates to set out plants
• A planting date is included for items you started by seed (both early and late options)

The only thing this doesn't do is give me a date to sow a second harvest. Okay... I guess I can work a little and figure that one out. It should be pretty obvious from all the information given on the chart. Can you tell that I just want someone to tell me "do it on this date"?

I believe a big thanks is in order to Gayla Trail and Maggie Wang who developed this chart. Give them a big shout out and leave a comment here!