Hello, this is Ben Scow with Utah State University Extension in Washington County and I have a gardening tip for you as we go throughout the month of March.
This is a tip that has to do with a question that we often get when we start to warm up when people get spring fever and we want to plant our gardens and get things going because it feels like it's starting to warm up. It's a little bit tricky in Utah because our weather fluctuates quite a bit. We get some pretty wide temperature swings where it will warm up. It feels like spring and then gets cold again.
So planting is a little bit tricky. As a rule of thumb you can plant your cooler seasons, the ones that will tolerate colder weather with temperatures below freezing just fine this time of year for most of the state of Utah. You can plant your cabbage, broccoli, spinach, peas, crops that really like the cold temperatures.
And then as we warm up a little bit more and get later into the year it's safe to plant warm season plants or crops and vegetables. Things like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, melons. Things like that don't tolerate temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But to be able to find that date is a little bit tricky because it is a little different for every city or town across the state of Utah because our temperatures vary so widely.
I encourage people to go to the Utah Climate Center website. Go to the climate data tab and find frost dates and then from there you can find the city or town you live in or one close by and be able to base your plantings for warm seasons off that date.
For the Saint George area we are looking at April 1 and for much of northern Utah we are going to be well into May before we get to our warm season crops.
Again, this is Ben Scow with Utah State University Extension. I hope you guys have a great planting season.
