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The time to plan your spring garden seems to come earlier every year. This exciting time is really important for your outdoor space as it is one of the first steps in being ready for the growing season. Watching your garden plans come together is extremely rewarding, so we have brought together our best advice to help your dreams for your garden become a reality!

Planning and Prepping Your Space

A well thought-out start in your planning will help you all throughout the year! One of the main things to consider during your planning is what kind of space you will be working with. Since different crops need different amounts of sunlight to thrive, make sure that you are organizing your garden accordingly. Considering how much space each crop physically takes up (not the recommended spacing), is important when drawing out your garden. Will you plant bushy plants? Or are your crops going to climb? And if so, do you have structures ready for your plants to climb up? All of these questions are helpful to consider during this stage and will maximize your harvest. Once you know how much room your plants need, you will also have an easier time with planned, intensive planting. Intensive planting is when the entire garden floor gets covered by a canopy. This creates a mulch-like surface that helps keep soil cool and weedless. I am a big fan of this method for my garden, along with the use of companion planting. I will touch on both of these in my workshop in early March, so be sure to join me.

Once your garden space is planned out, you are ready to start working on your soil! Amending your soil will help guarantee that you are working with the best soil for your crops, giving you a higher chance of growing success. We will talk about building healthy soil in a following post, so be sure to check back often.

Planning Your Crops

Deciding which crops to grow is one of the biggest steps during this process, but it does not have to be a scary one! Knowing what things to consider when picking out plants is not only important, but it also makes planting day a lot easier! Here are a few things to keep in mind when making your selections:

1. What Gets Eaten: Knowing what typically gets eaten quickly in your household can help you determine how much of one crop to grow. Figuring out what plants will and won’t get used not only maximizes your garden’s usefulness but also helps reduce the possibility of waste.

2. How Many Seasons You Are Growing For: While some people only plan out gardens for a summer harvest, others may wish to harvest during spring and fall as well. Because we recommend ordering your seeds for the entire growing season now, it is helpful to consider how long you wish to be harvesting when thinking about which kinds of crops to grow!

3. Companion Planting: Companion planting is one of the most effective ways to protect and maximize your harvest while giving your crop valuable nutrients and beneficial insects! As companion planting is so important for your garden, I will be going into greater depth on it and giving advice on how to effectively utilize it at a seed-starting workshop in the near future. (more information on the workshop at the bottom.)

4. Last thing to consider now is if you have the space for plants that are harvested only once, or if it would be helpful to choose crops that are cut and come again. I have a pretty large garden space and typically grow crops that can be harvested many times throughout the season.

   
   
   

Planning Your Supplies for the Seed Starting Workshop

When deciding how to go about starting your garden, you have to consider if you will start your transplants from seed or if you’ll purchase them from a market. Starting from seed can seem overwhelming, but it’s SO much fun. In fact, it gets me through the dark, gray days of winter! If you grow from seed, you are not limited to what the stores sell. You can tailor it to your tastebuds and growing climate! There are an endless amount of vegetables and varieties to grow and choosing each season is the fun part! If you choose to start from seed and just don’t know where to start, I have gathered a bunch of supplies that I personally selected to hopefully make the process of picking out equipment a little less stressful. There are options for supplies that are useful for all of the different levels of intensity and involvement based on your experience. I will walk you through the entire seed starting process, so check out the equipment below if you need it and bring it along during our workshop! This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Just a Sprout (Beginner):

Beginning to Bloom (Intermediate):

Full Fledged Green-Thumb (Advanced):

A Greener Option:

Choosing what seed catalogs to order:

Although there are certainly many things to consider when thinking out your plant plans, there are so many resources to help you out along the way so this process does not get overwhelming. Seed catalogs are an especially useful guide to navigating which seeds you wish to order. My favorite catalogs are those from Territorial, Johnny’s, High Mowing, Baker Creek, and Seed Savers, along with tiny companies that have specialty seeds! I usually choose catalogs based on the organic and heirloom varieties available, since they are what I grow.

Once you have picked out a catalog, it can be difficult to interpret exactly what the catalog is saying. Our next blog will help with reading through and understanding the symbols, charts, and diagrams that are typically found in catalogs so that it is easier to find exactly what you are looking for! We will also be talking about which types of seeds would work well for different gardens and how to understand the information on seed packets.

Make sure to mark your calendars for the seed-starting workshop that will take place on Friday, March 3rd at 6:00 pm EST! The workshop will be super helpful for more in-depth discussion on planning and starting your garden and seeds! It will also be live, so I’ll try to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you so much for your reading and we look forward to the next blog, which will focus on ordering and interpreting seed packets and catalogs! Make sure to also sign up for our newsletter, which will give you free access to our own seed starting planner!

Let’s Get Growing!

Shannon