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The Nursery LedgerA guide to specialty plant nurseries and mail order growing

Parterre 06 · Growing Guides

Growing guides and the planting calendar

A planting calendar by USDA zone, and the first-season care that carries a mail order plant from the box to established: heeling in, potting up, watering in.

Garden notebook open beside a soil thermometer and trays of recently potted mail order perennials on a weathered potting bench

Every guide on this site leans on two references: the calendar that turns USDA zones into planting windows, and the first-season routine that carries a dormant mail order plant from the box to establishment. The calendar is the signature page of the site, and it is built to be argued with: it gives windows and soil temperatures, not prophecies.

The first-season guide is the other half of the craft. Heeling in when the bed is not ready, potting up when it is too early to plant out, and the disciplined watering that decides whether a bare-root tree leafs out or sulks. Between them, the two pages close the loop from order form to established plant.

In this parterre

  1. Garden planning table with a zone map, seed packets sorted by season and a hand drawn planting calendar in a gardener notebook

    A planting calendar by USDA zone

    Every seasonal claim on this site resolves to the same table. Here are the planting windows by zone band, what a zone actually measures, and the way to bend the table to your own garden.

  2. Bare root plants heeled into a trench of moist soil at the edge of a vegetable garden with their labels tied above ground in rows

    Heeling in: a mail order plant’s first season

    Between the box and the border lies the most underwritten part of gardening: the first season. Heeling in buys time, potting up buys growth, and a watering habit buys the plant.

Every guide in this parterre reads against the planting calendar by USDA zone, and two neighbouring parterres extend it: Find a Nursery and Plant Specialties.