Spring Garden - When to Plant?

LA Planting Guide

I highly recommend this book:

Month to Month Gardening in Louisiana

Written by Dan Gill It covers vegetable gardens, but also covers lawn/trees/shrubs/etc. There's a newer revised edition that is basically the same contents.

The LSU ag center page helps a lot as well. We grow tons of peppers, a few tomatoes (I don't eat them raw but wife loves them), and yardlong beans. With peppers, I have better yields with non-bell pepper types. Corno di Toro peppers are my bread and butter sweet pepper. I know other folks who grow and have great luck with blocky bells. Could be my particular microclimate or soil..who knows. Trial and error. Plant a good variety and keep notes because you won't remember next year. Dates, varieties, how well they produce...just jot it down. You'll be grateful you did next year.

Another tip, trust that book and the LSU Ag site. Our summers are brutally hot with little cool in the evenings. Big box stores will try to sell you all manner of plants we cannot grow in our summers. The good news is, we can grow almost everything in this state. It just has to be planted at the right time. That time is somewhat out of whack with much of the country.

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Ragin, I was about to post looking for the pepper type I'm guessing you posted pics of last year. You're starting from seed correct? Where are you getting your seeds? Need to do something different bell pepper wise, just wasting garden space.

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I usually try a handful of new things each year. I've had good luck with this site's products:
Trade Wind Fruit Co

I also grow a burpee variety called Costa Rican Sweet


Top left: Costa Rican Sweet
Bottom Left: Yellow Corno Di Toro
Bottom Right: Red Corno Di Toro

Not having a problem with growing them, it's the lack of production that's killing me. And I have japs in garden I planted in the spring and I'm still picking off the plants.

I was picking corno's off up until Christmas. (same for ghost peppers and my Petenero peppers) I probably would have had more, but the garden kind of went pear shaped around September/October with the new baby prep and arrival.

We grow everything from seed. I need to check my journal, but it's nearing the time I start my peppers. We moisten paper towels and sprinkle seeds on it. Roll them up/fold them over and put each variety in it's own zip-lock (left partially open) on top of the refrigerator. Once they sprout, I transfer them to 16oz Styrofoam cups labeled with a name and a few holes punched in the bottom. We keep a knock-down shelf and a set of fluorescent shop lights on chains and a timer. By the time I transplant into the garden, they are at least a foot tall and ready to start kickin' arse.

Remember this.........Don't break the ground during Lent. Follow that and you should be fine. If your soil is dry you can get some potato's and onion in right now!

I always plant my tomatoes the second week of February. They are small enough through the second week of March or so that they can be covered with a grocery bag if a freeze/frost hits. If they get too big before a frost I put a sprinkler on them about an hour before daylight to keep the frost off.

I usually only plant about half of mine that early. The rest I put in the ground around the beginning of March to stagger when they come in. For the past couple years I've had between 50 and 60 plants, thinking about cutting back this year.

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Remember this.........Don't break the ground during Lent.

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Old timers back home used to always try to plant on Good Friday.

But, then, I planted some peppers in late February last year and had my best crop ever. It all depends on the weather.