In previous seasons, I’ve treated essentially all my plants, including hardy annual flowers, as planting out on May 15. My average last frost date is between May 10 and May 20. With living on a ridge, we do have cooler weather than the valleys. In winter time, everywhere else will have their snow melted and we still have ours. I actually love it in way, living where we are the last people with the snow. But with planting flowers, I tend to be cautious and wise knowing that I may need to wait a little more than some of the gardens in the valleys in the same area and zone.
While planning for this growing season, 2023, I set April 15 for my planting out date on hardy cool annual flowers, such as snapdragons, pansies, dianthus, and larkspur. I remember reading that these are usually planted a month before one’s last frost date. A month is about four weeks.
Watching an episode from the Gardener’s Workshop, cool hardy annual flowers can be direct seeded and transplanted into the ground six to eight weeks before the last frost date. Aaaah!
This changes everything.
Changing My Hardy Annual Planting Date
I use an excel sheet to keep all my seed starting organized. Fortunately for me, this means for my hardy annuals I just had to change the one cell with my planting date from April 15 to April 3.
I think what threw me off before watching this video with some cool flower growers is how I have some flowers already in bloom by this time. Knowing that we still had snow in April and May in the past few years made me cautious and content with planning to plant out by April 15.
Eight weeks before my last frost date of May 15 is March 20. Sometimes we have really nice warm weather during March, but other times it is transitioning from false spring #2 to winter #3. Six weeks before my last frost date is April 3.
When I take pictures with my cell phone, the name of the photo is the year, the month, and date followed by some sort of other numbers- maybe the time . . . I remember taking pictures of my daffodils last year. Scrolling back through, I discovered that they were in bloom on April 5. Finding pictures from a few years before this, they were in bloom April 4. I feel confident in planting out cool hardy transplants around April 3 for this 2023 growing season.
My Plans are On Track
Bumping the seed starting date for my hardy annuals in excel by twelve days does not put those plans off track. For the most part, I just need to get started here sooner than I originally planned. But, plans are a bit late for my pansies. I have planned to start pansies eleven to twelve weeks before planting out. That is last week and right now. I could start them this evening, but I don’t want to turn on a grow light for only a few plants. So, I’ll wait to start pansies when I also start my snapdragons and yarrow around January 23, next Monday.
This is gardening though. A plan can change as soon as one learns some new information. My plants would have been okay being planted out in mid-April if I didn’t discover this. And with learning this new knowledge, next year I can plan to plant out eight weeks before my first frost date. In gardening plants grow, but so do the gardeners.