Games

Grow Something

Pick a plant and a spot. Find out what it needs before you buy the seed.

Skill this builds: work out whether a plant will do well in a particular spot, and why a first garden usually fails
About: About 5 minutes · Standards: Every figure is one your seed packet also carries., It will not guess your frost date., It does not promise a harvest. · Plays offline

Pick something to grow. Say how much sun the spot gets and whether it is a pot or the ground. Enter how many weeks you are from your last frost — look it up, we will not guess it. Then go and plant it, and find out whether we were right.

Playing as

Your Beacon

Change

What do you want to grow?

How much sun does the spot get?

Pot or ground?

Where are you against your last frost?

Light

Radish wants roughly three to six hours of direct sun, and this spot has six or more hours of direct sun.

The light is not the problem here.

Timing

You have not entered your last-frost date, so nothing here can tell you when to plant.

Look it up first. A guessed frost date is the one mistake on this screen that would actually kill a garden.

Find your last frost date first

Freeze and frost date probabilities for weather stations across the country, published as a normal rather than a single date — because the last frost is a probability, not a promise.

Your state's Cooperative Extension service publishes the same dates for your county, usually with local planting calendars alongside.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

Radish

The fastest thing most people can grow. Something happens within a week, which matters enormously the first time.

Give each one about 2 inches. Crowding is the failure that looks like bad luck.

About 3 to 5 weeks from sowing, depending on the variety and the weather. Your seed packet carries the number for the variety in your hand — check us against it.

This does not predict a harvest. Weather, soil, pests and the particular corner you are in decide that. A season that does not work is information about the season, not about you.

You can test every line above by planting the thing and waiting. Almost nothing else on this site can be checked that directly — do it.

What this cannot tell you

Your actual last-frost date: It is local and it is a probability rather than a date. NOAA and your state's Extension service publish it for your county. We will not guess it.
Your soil: What is under you decides more than anything on this screen. Extension services test soil, often cheaply.
Whether you will get a harvest: Weather and pests decide that. A simulator that promises tomatoes teaches a child that a bad season was their fault.
Your particular corner: A wall that holds heat, a tree that shades at four o'clock, a frost pocket at the bottom of a slope. All real, none visible from here.
What grows where you are, beyond this short list: Eight plants chosen because they are forgiving. Your Extension service has the full list for your county.

The USDA hardiness map is the one most people misread: Which perennials survive an average winter where you live. It is a WINTER-COLD map and says nothing about summer heat, season length, or when to plant an annual vegetable — which is what most people think it is for. Look yours up

The point

Now go and plant it. Everything above can be checked against a real windowsill, which is more than most screens can say.