Planning Your Garden

This is my favorite part of winter. I am a planner by nature and I love my garden. So this is the best part of the year for me! I get to dream about spring while impatiently waiting for the cool/cold, wet days of winter to hurry up and go. Today, I wanted to get into some of the nitty, gritty aspects of planning your garden. Whether this is your first garden, or your 50th, I hope you can learn something from this post.

Why Planning Your Garden Is Important

There are a million and a half reasons why you should at least have a general idea about WHY you should be planning your garden. Some of these reasons include space, frost dates, what you eat, what you want to grow, and your storage capabilities. That’s not all of them by any means, but it is a good place to get started for your future garden.

Planning Your Garden Space

This may seem like a fairly straight forward thing, right? But you would be surprised how many people over, or under plant, a space. Now, I have to be completely transparent here and tell you that I am an over planter. If I can plant something every 6in I’m probably planting closer to 4in. It’s a flaw that is probably not going to change anytime soon.

But the other part of planning out your garden space is understanding that you probably have more than you think. Fruit and vegetables don’t ONLY have to go into the garden! If you have a porch, patio, or other seating area, you can absolutely plant in containers. In fact, even with 500 sq ft of raised bed space, I still plant in pots around the garden.

I also plant in hanging pots around the house, on our porch, and around the greenhouse, because why not!

Also look at vertical gardening! If you can trellis something, you can probably plant closer together. For example, I trellis/tie up my melons. This allows me to plant closer together to maximize space without sacrificing food.

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Planning For Your Frost Dates

Maybe I’m weird, which I am, but I don’t go off zones for my vegetable gardens. The reason is because zones don’t affect annuals (or things treated as annuals) like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. I will look at hardiness zones when looking at landscaping, perennials, orchards, etc.

Since zones aren’t my jam, I do make sure that I have a good handle on our frost dates. While this can change year to year, I take an average or look up average frost dates for my zip code. I really like this frost date finder from Dave’s Garden. This has been the most accurate as far as I can tell.

Why are frost dates more important than zones?

Well, because most vegetable gardens are planned and planted with annuals in mind, it really doesn’t matter what zone I’m in. What matters more is if I have enough days between the frost to have the plant reach maturity and harvest.

When I am planning my gardens, I look at the 50% temperature average date. If you click the link above, you will see a table that shows a bunch of temperatures, dates and percentages. In this particular example, I use the Helen, Ga table because that’s the closest to me. Then I start figuring out what I’m comfortable risking.

In the 2024 growing season, I will start my plants with the intention of planting around April 21st. That doesn’t mean that I WILL plant on April 21st but I will plan on it. Starting on April 21st, I will start looking at the 10 day forecast. If in those 10 days, there is no days that drop below freezing (or 32*), I will start planting things like corn, melons, cukes, squash, and some other frost tender plants.

I will still hold off on planting my heat loving plants, like peppers and tomatoes, until May 1st or so. We have found that by waiting until the day temperatures are steadily above 70*, we get a better harvest of tomatoes and peppers.

Planning Your Garden Based On What You Eat

Every single year, I caution new gardeners to only plant the things that they eat. Especially, if they are limited on space. If you hate everything tomato, do NOT plant a million tomato plants! Buuuuuttttt, if you have space and want to experiment, make sure to plant some weird varieties. You may find that you actually like THIS type of tomato.

Another thing to be sure of is, if you like something, make sure to plant a lot of it. Again, if space allows. Jared HATES cucumbers, but he loves pickles. So I plant a LOT of cucumbers, usually 10 plants, spaced out over several weeks. This means that I have fresh cucumbers and he gets plenty of pickles.

Another question when it comes to planning your garden is do you have livestock? Chickens and pigs LOVE cucumbers. Goats LOVE green beans. You can lower your feed bill if you plant extra for your animals.

What Do You WANT To Grow

This is, in my opinion, the most important question when it comes to planning your garden. I’m not saying that you should only plant things that you want to grow, but I AM saying that you should absolutely, always plant things that you want to grow.

Again, I hate raw tomatoes, but watching tomatoes grow? Man, it’s so cool!

I also plant a TON of flowers. Not for the pollinators, although that’s what I tell myself, but because they are pretty and I like them. I WANT to grow as many flowers as possible because they make me happy.

Don’t think that your garden has to be so utilitarian that you lose the beauty of YOUR garden.

Lastly, What Can You Store

If you only garden for fresh eating, by all means, ignore this part of the post. But if you are looking to put up food for winter, you really need to look at your storage capabilities. I have these amazing canning shelves that Jared built me, and he is working on building my food storage room this year.

Right now, we are limited only by what we can dehydrate, can or freeze. But since freezer space is limited to meats, we have to make sure that we can either eat things fresh, can or dehydrate.

If you can’t can, freeze or dehydrate, you should consider how much space you are giving to items that don’t store well. For example, tomatoes should be canned for preservation. When you freeze them, they turn to mush when they thaw. If that’s your goal, then you’re good to go. If not, maybe don’t plant 200 tomato plants.

Same goes for potatoes. If you don’t have a cool, dark place to store, I wouldn’t plant a ton of them. But if you can can them? You are golden. It’s really just thinking through how you are going to use the things you grow.

Pro Amateur Gardener Tip

I will never be a pro gardener…. Like ever. Mainly because there is just so much to learn. But one of the best tips I can ever give you, when it comes to gardening, is WRITE IT DOWN! You will absolutely not remember next year. Trust me! It’s a lie I tell myself every year, and every year I forget and regret.

I use these bullet journals because they are cute but also because they hold up really well. If you have any other tips, make sure to comment below this post. I would love to read them.