Planning for the Next Growing Season on a Homestead

Planning for the growing season doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does take some forethought – especially if you don’t want want to find yourself making costly last minute decisions.

That’s what kind of happened to me last year.

Instead of planning for the garden, I was preparing to move: packing, paperwork, moving, unpacking, etc. All while also trying to homeschool and travel for the holidays. To be honest, I didn’t have a garden plan until about mid-March. By then, it was too late to start any plants indoors from seed.

Beautiful spring garden with marigolds

I thought I could cheat the system.

While it was on the earlier side of the planting season, I knew that I could technically start planting most of my plants from seed directly in the garden. Then I would only have to buy a few varieties of veggies as started plants.

Well… that plan exploded right in my face. Out of all of the seeds I had planted, only one, lonely cabbage plant grew and survived. …and I ended up having to buy all that I wanted to plant as plant starts from local nurseries.

While no garden is ever perfect, you can greatly improve your chances of success and decrease your chances of costly mistakes with a little planning ahead following the steps below!

If you don’t already have one, decide on what kind of garden you want

You are going to need to decide if your garden will be in the ground, in raised beds, or even in pots on your patio. If it’s in the ground, you will need to decide if you want to till it or use a no-till method. For a raised bed, you will want to know how big it’s going to be and how much dirt you will need to fill it. Just as with the seeds, do some research so that you are not finding yourself running to the store last minute or ready to go and realizing that you don’t have the necessary equipment.

man working beside garden at sunset

A word of caution:

There is a lot of gardening information out there, but you don’t have to do it all or do it perfectly. Pick something that makes sense for you and your circumstances, and then you can add on as you get more and more familiar with gardening.

We share an in ground garden with my dad. He loves to till his garden, so we stick with that for now. Once we have our own land, that might change, but we’ll see. He tills it once the garden is done for the year and again before we plant.

Decide what you want to plant

This may sound obvious, but so often we get caught up trying to figure out what we want to plant that nothing gets done.

selection of plants on a nursery cart

If you are a new or newer gardener, I strongly recommend that you allow yourself to start slow. Pick the top 3-5 vegetables that your family likes to eat and just start with those. While you may be very familiar with how they taste, you now get to become familiar with how they grow and the work that goes into growing them.

Take a little bit of time to research each plants’ sun requirements (I don’t worry obsessively about soil requirements), if you can plant it in your garden zone (the farmer’s almanac is a great resource), planting depth and spacing, when/if to start indoors, which ones to start from seed in the garden, some good companion plants, and even what plants you really shouldn’t plant them beside. All of this information will help you be better able to plan out the layout of your garden.

newly planted garden

Decide on how you want to layout your garden

I think this is one of the more fun parts of planning for the next growing season! While you could very easily decide to just plant everything in straight rows from one side of the garden to the other, you also don’t have to. While you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with garden design, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

Get out some graph paper, and use what you learned about what you should and shouldn’t plant near each other. I’d pay more attention to what you shouldn’t plant near each other especially. In the picture below, I used dots to designate each plant and put the key at the bottom. This helped me visualize it a little better. Don’t forget to keep in mind proper plant spacing based on your research as you plan it out as well!

Plan to order seeds in December or January

Ideally! In a perfect world, it is best to order your seeds in December or January so that you have them. Now, I’m going off of the assumption that you want to start your plants from seed and not buy any started plants. If this is not the case for you and you just want to buy most of your plants pre-started, then you can go ahead and wait until they are ready in the nurseries.

However, if you are planning on starting your plants from seed, there are some plants that you could be starting as early as February. Having them all at the onset ensures that you are not frantically trying to find seeds at the last minute. There have also been some instances where seeds sell out. That was especially true right after the pandemic.

child carrying tomato starts to the garden

Figure out if there are any tools or supplies you need to purchase

Now that you know what type of garden you will plant and what you’re planting, it’s time to make sure that you have all of the necessary supplies needed to actually do the job.

If you are going to till your garden, do you have a tiller or do you know who you will borrow one from? If you need dirt, do you know where you will get it from? Will you need a hoe? Do you have any climbing plants that will need trellises? Will you need stakes to support any plants? Go through everything that you have decided on and ask yourself if there is anything that you will need that you do not have.

early summer garden

Create a planting timeline for yourself

This is where you will write out the optimal date for each task… again, based on the research that you did in the beginning. Here you will list when you need to prepare your garden, when/if you will fertilize it and with what type of fertilizer, optimal dates to plant each seed indoors, optimal dates to move the plants outdoors, optimal dates to plant from seed outdoors (not all of your plants need to be started inside), etc. Again, I love to use the farmer’s almanac to help me figure this stuff out from year to year.

Even acquiring your tools and supplies can be put on your timeline. You may not be jumping up to buy your seeds immediately, so go ahead and put your seed order date down. Decide on a “by date” for when you need to talk to someone to borrow a tool.

You could also go so far as to estimate specific harvest dates based on the days each plant is supposed to reach maturity. We do this with our green beans so that we can do a second planting in the same square footage. You could also use that information to help you plan out a preserving schedule. I personally don’t do that, but I have thought about doing that. It’s really all about what you’re willing to do.

Don’t be afraid to really get nitty gritty with your timeline. The more that you think through now, the easier it will be when you actually need to get the job done.

Once you have your dates listed out, you could go ahead and plug them right into your planner. I love putting these dates in my planner because then I know I’m not missing anything. When I open it up to a specific week and it says “plant green beans,” I know that I will need to make time to plant the beans when I do my weekly planning.

child planting in the garden

It’s your turn!

Take out some lined paper and some graph paper and have fun with it! I promise you that it won’t be perfect, but that’s okay. There will be some years that you have a bumper crop of tomatoes and other years where they rot on the vine before they’re ready for harvest.

The only way to fail in gardening is to not garden at all. So get out there, plan your garden during this winter season, and take it one step at a time.

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