Getting Started: A Garden Planning Summary

Start your Spring Garden Plans in the Fall. This may sound like a lot, but if you just work on it a few hours a week you'll be amazed at how much information you can organize for planning your garden.

After your last fall harvest you'll have a bit more labor to accomplish to begin prepartions for winter.

Here are a few tasks to consider:

• Planting a cover crop in Fall to turn over in Spring.
  -cover crops can be beautiful, but they also serve a more practical purpose of adding nutrients back to the soil. After winter, you can turn them over & re-build your garden on top of them.

• Composting & Mulching your previous/future Garden Plot
  -This is a critical investment in your soil’s future.

• Winterizing and/or stratifying special seeds, planting bulbs and shrubs
  -some seeds can’t simply be sown in the spring. They need the natural cycle of winter before warmth. You can plant these seeds in the fall, or keep them in your fridge or freezer.
  -bulbs and shrubs also do much better when planted in the fall, this gives them time to establish roots & get acclimated to the ground.
  
  Sea Holly seeds planted in soil & stratifying in the fridge for 2 weeks. We'll know by the end of April if it worked!
  
  By January you should have most “Getting Started” tools ready or on hand. In Jan you can start some seeds indoors like greens, lettuces, cabbages, parsley, broccoli and onions. In February you can start just about everything else in-doors.
  Remember, not everything does well started in-doors, as some plants prefer to be directly sown into the garden.  The following are lists you can create to help guide the seed starting schedule.
  
  •   Special Notes- a list of every plant you are adding to the garden, the sun it prefers, level of moisture, companion plants, mature height & width of the plant and any other details you may find interesting or important to remember
  
  
  • Indoor Seed Start- A List of every seed you are starting indoors and when
  • Transplant Schedule- The dates which you can move your indoor seedlings outdoors. Remember to “harden” them first. If you move seedlings quickly from inside to out they will be shocked and probably die pretty quickly. Instead move them outside for an hour one day, then 2 hours the next and more and more until they are ready to be transplanted.
  
  
  • Direct Sow- A list of the seeds you will be sowing directly into the soil come Spring.
  
  
  • Garden Grocery List & Budget-if you have any money concerns whatsoever this is also a critical step. Start a garden grocery List at the end of the fall, and add to it or remove items as necessary. This gives you several months to shop prices and find the best deals around. You may be able to score several items for free. Many communities have free compost, mulch or manure sights. A friend may have old seed trays they aren’t using anymore, and so on.
  
  
  • Garden Map on Grid-I really enjoy this part. If you are a perfectionist or are inclined to drawing or artwork whatsoever you will probably enjoy it too. Measure your plot(s) and draw a grid where every 1cm on the paper = 1sq/ft in the garden. Now you can plan where all of your plants will grow according to companions, area and sunlight needed. For example, your tallest or vertical plants should grow on the North side of your garden, strawberries don’t like to grow near spinach, and tomatoes don’t like to grow near corn. You can plant 16 carrots per square foot and 9 radishes per square foot.. these are all details that you can include on your Special Notes list.