Garden Planning - 4 Basic Steps To Gardening Success

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Even though Spring and Summer garden seasons are over, and we are not planting a Fall garden this year, we are thinking about our garden planning. We usually start garden planning for our Spring garden in the late Fall/early Winter.

Having a solid plan for the garden well ahead of time to actually plant just makes things run so much smoother.

Here are our top 4 garden planning basics:

1) How much space will you have?

This is the first, most important thing to decide since your space will dictate how much you can actually plant. We do a version of square foot gardening. Therefore, we know how many boxes we have set up.

This makes it super easy for our planning as we can just decide how many boxes (or 1/2 or 1/4 boxes) of each thing we want.

2) What types of plants and how many of each?

Now that you know how much actual space you have to plant in, you can make your wish list of plants. Making your crop list is probably the most fun part of garden planning.

We have a few yearly “go-to’s” such as zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes and winter squash. Each year, we usually then add in something new and fun — this year we did lemon cucumbers and chocolate peppers.

When deciding how many of each plant you will want or need, some things to think about are: how much does that plant typically produce, how much do you like it, will you want to preserve or freeze some to last through the year.

3) Where will you get your seeds?

Ok, so you might think it’s too early to buy your seeds. However, we have found that we can often times get some AWESOME Black Friday deals from Grow Organic.

These sales make it TOTALLY worth having your seed order pre-made so that if you catch a great deal you are prepared to take advantage.

4) Expansion ideas?

Fall is a great time to build new infrastructure if you’ll need it. Since you’ve already figured how much space and what you’ll grow, you can now add new boxes, trellising, etc. We made the grid below but you can also buy one.

Or, if it is your first garden, you can get all of those items set up. Other things to think about are if you have berry patches or fruit and nut trees as the Fall can be a great time to order those too!