good morning I was just out in my garden getting some final measurements because
I'm starting my planning process for this spring's garden and it got me to
thinking I've been seeing a question a lot on the internet on different social
media channels and that question is how exactly do you plan a garden it can be a
daunting question especially if you're just starting out and I wish there was a
one-size-fits-all kind of answer to that question but I don't think there is
gardening is such a deeply personal endeavor I would always encourage you to
find the planning process that works well for you and in your own garden some
people are really detail-oriented some people could care less so it's important
to find what works for you that being said I would always advise you to talk
to other gardeners listen to ideas get tips and tricks that other people have
used try them in your own process and see what works really well for you now
today I'd like to share with you my own garden planning process in hopes that
you can do just that maybe glean some little useful nuggets
from my process and use it in your own the first step in the planning process
is to make a giant wish list I always sit down in late December or early
January with my giant stack of gardening catalogues my notebook and my pen and I
make wish lists from every single catalog
do not skip this step it is the most fun in the whole process besides the actual
gardening just go crazy write down everything you're interested in if you
had unlimited resources and space and time you will wean down the list later
but this is a really fun exercise to do in the dead of winter when there's not a
lot of gardening to be had the next step is figuring how much space you have
available so if you've already got devoted beds in ground or raised beds
just figure out your total square footage and dimensions if you know that
you're gonna work some ground up in the spring factor that in as well but
just get a rough idea of how much actual space you have to work with once you've
figured the amount of space that you have available you can set down and make
your actual garden plan on paper now there are plenty of good garden planning
apps out there some are free a lot of them require payment some will do a free
trial for like seven days I've tried different versions of these programs in
the past and they are a lot of fun to play with but I really have ultimately
found them unnecessary my go-to now is just using an Excel spreadsheet where
every cell denotes one square foot and that works really well for me I also
keep a log each year of the spacing on all my vegetables so that I can easily
pop that into my garden chart the following year and know exactly how much
space is required for any given crop now I will tell you if you're anything like
me your garden will never actually look like your garden plans it's a good idea
to do them anyway just because it does give you a realistic perception of the
space and what you can grow but don't fret if your beans end up where your
Tomatoes were originally charted and if your map doesn't look anything like your
final garden in the spring so the next step is to figure out what you
absolutely need to grow only you are going to know the answer to this do you
grow from market do you grow to feed your family are you only eating your
crops fresh out of the garden or do you preserve food for the winter there are a
lot of different variables that go into factoring how much you actually need to
grow now if you're feeding your family there are some handy charts online that
will actually show you an estimate of how much you should grow to feed a say like
four-person family but I found that the best figures just come from experience
I've actually started keeping a log on my pantry and my freezer that when I put
food away in the summer and fall I actually log each thing that I put in
the freezer or pantry and as we use it we cross it off so at the end of the
season I can see well we used up all our apple sauce by December and we had 30
packages of blueberries left over I can kind of adjust my figures for the
following year so once you know what you absolutely need to grow figure how much
space will be needed for those crops you can plug these into your garden plan as
you go and then if you have room left over you get a move on to the next step
which is what do I want to grow these are things that you don't necessarily
need to feed your family but you're really interested in trying or you've
never grown before or say it's just a new variety of something like a tomato
that you've never tried before and you don't know how it will perform you can
allocate your remaining space to these wants kind of things from your wish list
that you made back at the beginning of the winter so the next thing that I do
is make an organized list I use Excel for this but you may find that a
handwritten list in a notebook works just as well so as I mentioned in the
beginning my process is very detailed you can see here on my trial list this
is my list of everything that I will be growing in the spring I've got a lot of
information for every variety that I'm growing so I include genus species
common name the variety name I like to pick up the information from the
catalogue that I bought it from as far as how they described the variety
I've got days to maturity and then as far as my own note-taking I include all
kinds of information so I like to gather the size of the plant the size of the
crop or the fruiting part of the plant itself details about the color and
texture the disease resistances any any insects that I notice on the plants so
this is the part where I feel like you may not need all this detail but at the
very least I would recommend including what the variety was the catalog that
you bought it from and a place where you can put in a few notes after you've
grown it and see whether you like it or not this will help a lot when you're
getting ready to plan next year's garden and you're like I really liked that
tomato I grew last year but what was that called and who did I get that from
and oh yeah I really didn't want to grow that pepper but I don't remember
which one it was you can just go back and look at your notes and easily see
what you liked and what you didn't and if there's stuff that you want to
reorder the following year you've got all the information down already I also
find it useful to have some sort of a seed organization system set up now you
can buy pretty little boxes and tins from any gardening center or online and
these are really nice if you just have a small amount of seeds that you're
dealing with I was gifted this one and it's lovely but I found that I just have
too many seeds to use something like this
so I've gone to a system of just using Tupperware bins and within each bin I
put gallon ziplock bags and label the crop and then all my seed packets go
inside the gallon ziplock bags and then as I get closer to planning time I like
to organize all of my crops in the bins according to planting time so I'll put
all of my early sown crops in one bin I'll put all of my warm-season direct
sown crops in another I'll put large seeded direct sown crops like squash and
beans and corn in another bin so that I know when it's February and I should be
starting cruciferous crops in the greenhouse I can just pull out my bin
and basically so everything that's within it and the last part of my
process now is making sure that I have all of my supplies ready I have been
burnt so many times where I've had all of my list really organized and all my
seed ordered I'd have it all of this information typed into my Excel
spreadsheet I get all my seeds in it's like April and I'm getting ready to jump
in the garden I'm so excited and then I realize I'm missing like a spade or like
I don't know potting soil or something to start my seeds in and then I
inevitably have to make a rush to the local big-box store which I don't like
to do and pick up something because I need it that day because you know how
gardening is when it when that weather breaks and you want to get out there you
want to get out there now so it's really nice to make sure that you have
everything that you'll need as soon as that weather breaks or as
soon as you want to be starting seeds indoors well I hope that you were able
to find some useful tidbits out of my planning process and I'd love to hear
from you is there any method that you have used for planning your garden that
has worked really well it's always nice to hear from other gardeners thanks for
watching and I'll see you next time