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cynthia_h wrote:Are you familiar with the Sunset Western Garden Book? The Sunset climate zone system will help you select the vegetables (and cultivars/varieties) with the best chances of success in your specific climate zone, as well as when to plant and expect to harvest them.
The Sunset climate zone system is much more specific (and helpful, at least in the western states and provinces) than the USDA Hardiness Zones, since it incorporates many more parameters. You've mentioned elsewhere that you're in northern Utah, so your most likely Sunset zones are 1A, 2A, 2B, 3A, or 3B. (These are the zones from Provo north.)
Use them as a guide, and expect it to be about 85% reliable. In my own case, Sunset was an excellent guide for my previous house, but for this house--with its strange microclimate--it took me a couple of active gardening seasons to figure out that this house doesn't know it's in Sunset Zone 17. It thinks it's in a cooler zone, so...I grow cooler-zone veggies, and they do quite well.
This has been a short summary of my usual "Sunset speech/shpiel." If you *really* want the whole thing, I'm sure a search on my author name and "Sunset climate zone" will find a few iterations of it for you!
Happy gardening.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9