Planning your garden: It’s time to think ahead
It’s dark and rainy and has been for weeks on end. It feels like Spring will never get here. While you can’t speed up time, you can start planning ahead. This is the perfect time to look back on your gardening successes and map out what you want to grow in the coming season.
Review Your Garden Journal
If you’re like some folks, you can’t remember why you walked into the kitchen 5 minutes ago let alone remember what you planted where. This is why it’s very helpful to keep a garden journal. You can keep track of daily activities, weather, what plants thrived and what plants barely survived.
You can really get into details with your garden journal. If you’re not sure what would be good to track, start with this list:
- Watering activities
- Soil conditions
- Did plants grow?
- Did you start from seed? If not, where did you buy your starts from? When were they purchased and planted?
- Where were vegetables planted?
- Did you amend the soil? When? What did you use?
- Were there garden pests or diseased plants?
If you did manage to keep a journal last year, now is a great time to review it before you start planning your garden for this year. If you didn’t keep a journal, it is highly recommended to start one. Try to remember the list of items above. These are the questions you should be asking yourself as you plan your garden.
Collect Seed Catalogs
Collecting seed catalogs is kinda like collecting catalogs from L.L. Bean or Williams-Sonoma – they make you think about what you really want. You probably don’t have the space to plant everything (which is very tempting).
Seed catalogs also help you think about certain requirements – such as the amount of space needed to grow, sunlight requirements, and harvest time. After all, you don’t want the plants to harvest while you’re in the middle of your vacation.
There are plenty of seed companies that offer catalogs, and some of the best are right here in Oregon.
If you do plan to purchase seeds, be sure to place your order early. You don’t want to be disappointed to learn that the seeds you had your heart set on are sold out.
Have you been to a local farmer’s market and seen Gathering Together Farms? Guess what? Wild Garden Seed are the same folks. Based in Philomath, Oregon, Wild Garden Seed is an Oregon Tilth Certified organic seed and vegetable farm.
We love to play with different online tools and the garden planning tool on Territorial Seed Company’s website is no exception. Territorial Seed Company is based in Cottage Grove, Oregon and offers a tremendous variety of organic and non-organic vegetable seeds.
In 2009, Adaptive Seeds began in Sweet Home, Oregon. The company offers open pollinated and organic seeds grown right here in the Pacific Northwest.
The Garden Space
Once you’ve reviewed your garden journal and have your seed catalogs, it’s time to decide what vegetables you want to plant. If you plan to plant from seed and not from starts, you’ll have to figure out if seeds need to be started indoors and when. Some seeds are fine planted directly 
in the ground as well.
Now you can create your planting schedule – what gets planted and when.
Follow the Map
Once you figure out the when and what parts of the planning process, it’s time to figure out where everything gets planted. The best part of the process is mapping the garden. This is where you have your garden drawn out and decide what gets planted where. If you’re not the drawing by hand type, there are plenty of online apps and websites that will help you figure that out.
When it’s time to get your garden ready, be sure you pay a visit to Best Buy in Town. We carry several types of compost that will keep your soil healthy and give your plants the best chance to grow. Give us a call today!
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