If you look at a map of the United States, Zone 6 forms a slightly upturned line from eastern Oregon through the central states of Kansas, Missouri, and southern Illinois, and over to the coast into Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts.
These states may have little in common on the surface, and their climates will vary based on the coastline they are closest to and their elevation, but gardeners throughout Zone 6 can start their gardens around the same time each year.
When you’re just starting a garden in a new zone or perhaps starting your first gardening adventure, your USDA growing zone is a helpful thing to learn. The best way to understand the growing zones is this: higher numbers equate to a longer growing season.
While some crops can tolerate the short, cold seasons of Zones 2 and 3, others require long, hot days to grow to maturity and will perform better in Zones 8 and 9. However, season extension strategies, like greenhouses, row cover, and low tunnels, can make a huge difference in colder climates.
Gardeners constantly learn about their crops, soil, pest control, etc, and mastering certain things takes time and experience. Getting started is more straightforward and doesn’t have to be complicated; learning is half the fun! For brevity, we’ll focus on annual vegetables in this article. Let’s get into how to start a vegetable garden in Zone 6.
Pick Your Plot
Location is everything, right? Sunlight, soil drainage, and access to water are just a few reasons why the proper location is crucial for a new garden. Here’s why:
- Most vegetables require and thrive when they receive a full day of sun, so plot out a space that receives full sun with some afternoon sun.
- Pick the most level spot on your property to avoid run-off and erosion.
- Ideally, you’ll have a grass and weed-free area to start your vegetable gardens. To remedy heavy grass or weeds, consider using a silage tarp to cover the area or use cardboard and compost to smother them from the sunlight.
- Soil should drain well and not have much compaction. Use a broadfork and add compost to increase aeration, improve the soil structure, and attract earthworms. Work with your local extension office or gardening club for assistance in selecting the best spot on your property.
- Ensure easy access to water for irrigation.
Pro Tip: If you plan to grow in tall raised beds, save money by filling the bottom ⅔ with organic materials like decomposing lots and sticks, grass clippings, and spent microgreen trays. Then mix in topsoil, potting, or organic seed-starting mix, depending on what you’re sowing.
Test Your Soil and Add Necessary Amendments
If nothing has grown in the new garden plot, or you’re unsure of its history, soil testing is a great place to start. The results will give you a baseline of what’s in your soil or, perhaps, more importantly, what’s not.
Imagine being sent to work or school without a nutritious breakfast and expected to perform your best. No way, right? Vegetables require proper nutrients throughout their lives to grow strong and healthy, produce at their peak ability, and ward off pests and diseases.
Soil tests include an analysis and a recommendation report, which you can take to your local garden center and pick up the appropriate amendments. Most results include applications in acres, so adjust them to fit the square footage of your garden. To make a general application of the same nutrients in the whole space, divide the square footage by the number of garden beds you have to spread it out evenly.
While other macro and micronutrients like zinc, iron, and copper are crucial to plant health, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus (NPK) are the building blocks for growing food. Nitrogen is a powerhouse and vital fertilizer, especially for new gardens, so pay close attention to this one.
Just note that too much nitrogen can lead to lots of healthy foliage but only a little flower and fruit production. Once you get the hang of gardening, jump into the world of cover cropping and learn how legumes can affix nitrogen in the soil via nodules in their root system and make it available to future plants.
Prepare Garden Beds
Now you get to decide how you’d like to grow your garden. Are you planting straight into the ground soil, or do you prefer the convenience and height of raised metal or wooden grow beds?
Many tools today target market gardeners and fit into a 30-inch bed system. If you plan to use a broadfork, electronic tilther, or gridder, consider creating 30-inch beds. Whatever system you adopt, keep it consistent to make future plantings easier to plan and execute.
Growers in Zone 6 have a decently long season, but some protection from chilly night temperatures may be necessary in the early and late part of the year, so have a plan to do so. When all your beds are the same width and a similar length, you can cut all your row cover and insect netting to the same size. This cohesiveness also allows for easy planting math when ordering seeds and adjusting your sowing schedule.
Pick Your Veggies
Don’t overcomplicate it, and start with easy-to-grow veggies for beginners, like head lettuce, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and carrots. Learn about companion planting with herbs like dill and cilantro and pollinator-friendly flowers like marigolds and sweet alyssum to help deter pests. Select crops that will have time to mature in the months between the last frost of spring and the first frost of fall.
Select cold-hardy versions of each crop for the colder parts of the season and transition to mid and main-season versions in the summer months. Conversely, swap cold-hardy crops like kale, greens, and lettuce in the opposite manner for summer.
For example, I start my season with ‘Auroch’ spinach, ‘Winterbor’ kale, and ‘New Red Fire’ head lettuce; they all tolerate low temperatures. When temperatures increase, I switch to butterhead and romaine lettuces, baby kale mixes, and pac choi, which are less likely to bolt in the heat.
Remember, start heat-loving tomatoes and peppers indoors, and don’t move them outdoors to harden off until the risk of frost has passed and the temperatures aren’t drastically fluctuating.
I consider putting summer crops out only once I’m safe from fluctuating temperatures and temperatures below 55°F (13°C) do I consider putting summer crops out. Keep a row cover nearby to cover them if needed. Zone 6 has mild to hot summers, with a medium-length growing season of about 184 days.
Create a Sowing Schedule
Based on your region’s last frost date, create a schedule including crop varieties, days to maturity, germination date, hardening off date, and planned planting date. Adjust these as needed according to the weather and what’s going on in the garden. Perhaps your summer squash is doing well, so you push the next sowing to keep them in the ground longer.
Days to maturity are reported differently by various seed companies, so be sure to know if it refers to the time from seeding or transplant. Doing so will make a big difference in your planning. Include as much information in your graph as possible, adding columns as you see fit.
Once you know when and what you’ll be planting, draw maps of each garden area to envision it. Use a pencil so you can adjust as needed during the planning stages.
Irrigation Options
Access to water is crucial to vegetable gardening, so this is an essential part of starting one from scratch. If you’ve plotted your garden aptly near water, now decide how you want to water your garden. There are several different irrigation options to choose from. Which you choose depends on your space, budget, and desired style.
Underwatering and overwatering can cause serious issues, but luckily, they are easy to remedy. Overhead watering, the traditional Garden Oya™, drip lines, deep, and shallow watering methods each have their place in the garden. Learn how each works to ensure your plants have the proper water.
Generally, drip irrigation is the best method so water gets straight to the root system. Deep watering will be especially crucial on hot days in Zone 6. If you grow in raised beds, look for customizable systems that allow you to water your crops precisely. Overhead watering is best when you’ve broadcasted flower or cover crop seeds in a bed, and the soil needs consistent watering. Use ollas during droughts and vacations.
Start Seeds
Let’s talk about direct sowing versus starting seeds indoors. Your chosen method depends on the crop, garden setup, and climate. Many seeds require the warmth of the indoors or a heat mat to germinate correctly, while some need sunlight to sprout, so pay attention to notes related to each crop you choose.
Starting seeds indoors allows you to control the environment, giving the seeds their best shot at germinating. Also, consider spring bird and rodent pressure in your area, which may see your directly sown seeds as an easy snack. Some growers, myself included, direct sow some crops and start some seeds in cell trays on the same day to fill in spots that don’t germinate or critters carry off.
Warm-weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, and melons indoors will benefit significantly from additional time in a grow room or greenhouse protected from the elements.
Direct Sow or Transplant
Now that you have your soil amended, garden plots set, and irrigation set up, it’s time to start planting! Plant each crop according to your last frost date. In USDA growing Zone 6, the last anticipated spring frost is between mid-April and mid-May. Use the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map to find your region’s exact date.
Base your first plantings on cold hardiness, successions planned, and the sowing schedule you created. Transplant hardy greens and brassicas like kale, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, and cabbage around the same time as you direct sow spinach, turnips, radishes, and sugar snap peas.
Once you properly harden off your summer crops, grab a trowel and get to transplanting. When transplanting:
- Space out your veggies appropriately for optimal growth and yields. When planting in ground soil rows, leave enough space around each crop so they can grow to their maximum potential.
- Avoid cramming too many large crops like summer squash and zucchini, allowing squash bugs and fungal diseases to run rampant.
- Take care when transplanting cucurbits, who don’t like their roots disturbed. Just open a hole, plop the seedling in, and tamp down the soil around it.
- Postpone planting of delicate seedlings if severe weather is forecasted.
- Attract beneficial and predatory insects by planting herbs and flowers alongside your vegetables.
Protect
Each season is different, but there will be nights you should cover your crops to protect them from cold, overnight lows and summer stretches of hot, harsh sun.
- Cover early-season cold-sensitive plantings with row cover to extend the season but keep frost away.
- Mulch to help with soil drainage, reduce soil erosion, maintain a constant soil temperature, and reduce weed pressure.
- Use insect netting to deter pests like aphids and flea beetles.
- Use shade cloth to prevent crops like broccoli, spinach, and arugula from bolting in the heat of summer.
Monitor
As you become familiar with seasonal pests, weeds, weather patterns, and signs of disease, monitoring will become second nature.
- Control your weeds, which may serve as disease hosts, and compete for nutrients with your crops.
- Scout often for pests. Take note of any differences you notice at different parts of the season. Consider delayed planting of cucumbers and eggplant to avoid heavy hitters like cucumber beetles and the Colorado potato beetle.
- Learn about diseases that may affect your growing crops and how to prevent, control, and treat them.
- Note anything strange, like a growth pattern, unlikely companions, or unexpected successes.
Control Weeds
A seasoned farmer I worked for in 2017 once said, “Remember, small weeds become big weeds,” and I’ve never forgotten it. Weeding can be a meditative, relaxing task if you go out to your garden with this mindset. Studies show that working in the garden improves your mental health and mood. It’s a necessary task to keep your garden thriving.
Limit soil disturbance to avoid pulling up new weed seeds from below the soil surface. After a few years of no-till, you will have much less weed and more microbial activity.
Successively Plant
If there are cool-weather crops you grew in the spring that you love, with short maturity times, like spinach, baby bok choi, and radishes, plan to sow more when the temperatures cool down so you can enjoy them again. Crops like radishes, snap peas, beets, and salad turnips don’t germinate well in the heat, so use the sowing schedule as a guide, but pay attention to your weekly forecast and adjust accordingly.
Keep direct sown seeds consistently moist for high germination rates. Pro tip: Cover the soil with row cover and water through it. The wet row cover keeps the whole garden bed moist and protected. This method works incredibly well with carrots, which are finicky to germinate.
Gardeners often ask me how I keep lettuce going through the summer, and the secret is as simple as succession planting! I always have an extra tray of head lettuce in case I have extra space to pop them in or a heat wave comes through unexpectedly and takes some out.
Take Photos and Data Records
Garden records will be gold in future years, so grab a fresh notebook and pen and record everything, even if it seems unimportant.
The best garden records include:
- Germination rates of new crop varieties with notes about timing
- Harvest dates and amounts
- Was there a gap in your lettuce harvest? Note that so you can add a succession.
- Pest issues. Did companion plants help? How long did they last? What can you do in the future to control them?
- What diseases did you encounter, and when did they arise? Are there disease-resistant cultivars available?
- Note the timing and performance of crops. Did you push the boundaries of your last first date and regret it? Did you find a variety that performs well all season with little maintenance?
- Did you plant too densely, too early, or too late? Avoid these mistakes by exploring what went wrong during the off-season.
We always think we’ll remember everything we encountered during the season, but having them all in one place is best.
Most of us love gardening after the first few early morning watering sessions and abundant harvests. And just wait until you sit down to a meal made with ingredients you grew. Nothing compares!
