Free planting calendar for vegetable container gardening

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A handy planting calendar from the folks at Burgon & Ball and the Royal Horticultural Society (UK) is available for download.

The nice folks at B&B have teamed up with the Royal Horticultural Society to create a handy vegetable planning guide and calendar for container gardeners.

The calendar lists when to plant and harvest a variety of vegetables (and a few fruits) with the objective of giving gardeners the 5 vegetable servings a day that is recommended by nutritionists.

And the calendar and planning guide are specifically designed for vegetables that grow well in containers, and is part of the Burgon & Ball 5aday garden, designed together with the RHS Wisley and of which a half-size one can be found at Wisley Gardens and a full size on from July 6-11, 2010 at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

Burgon & Ball of Sheffield, England makes beautifully crafted gardening tools and aside from looking beautiful they should, properly cared for, last for generations. I shall, hopefully, be able to review some of their tools in due course. The first one will be their Potato Harvesting Scoop from their Harvest Range of products.

One thing is worth mentioning as regards the calendar: It is designed for gardeners who live and grow their produce in England, so you may need to adjust the timing to suit your location.

Most of England is considered to be located in hardiness zone 8, with the last and first frost dates reckoned to be March 15 and November 15 respectively. But there is no guarantee that frost will not strike later in spring or earlier in fall, as spring 2010 proved only too well.

If you live in Zone 8 in the US, you may not need to make any such adjustments, but if you live in a different hardiness zone, the recommendation would be to adjust the calendar a few weeks based on the first and last frost dates in your area.

You can download the calendar here.

© 2010