A Guide to Summer Garden Planning
For your convenience, I have included links to products and tools I think will be helpful. Please note that as an Amazon Associate, I do earn from qualifying purchases.
Intentional Gardening - A Summer Garden Plan
As the New Year sets in, I am thinking about how intention plays into my goals, my motivation, and how it influences what I accomplish day to day, month to month, and year to year. I have a goal this year to grow a beautiful and bountiful garden and to share it in a my container gardening blog. But that’s just a goal. That is not my intention.
Now, you might be thinking, “Aly, you are seriously over thinking this,” but hear me out. With everything in life, determining our intentions is what gives our goals meaning. Intention is the root of motivation. Intention is the “why?”. Without intention, without the “why?”, what is there to keep me going when I realize powdery mildew is going to take out all my zucchini, or when I have royally screwed up a dish I’m serving to ten people in an hour, or when I have a pity party and don’t feel my hard work is appreciated, or when I’m just plain tired and want to order takeout, instead of figuring out what to do with those 17 tomatoes my kids just dumped on the counter?
Goal or Intention?
A goal is action, but intention gives it meaning.
Intention is the “Why?”
I don’t spend an hour most nights in July, in the pitch dark after my kids go to bed, watering weeding, and de-slugging my garden by headlamp because that is when I do my best gardening. I do it because I work all day, and take care of the kids all evening, and if I don’t water my plants, they will die. I do it because I set intentions for my garden that are meaningful to me. I do it because my intentions motivate me.
So here it is…my garden intentions for 2023.
My intention is for my successes and failures in the garden and kitchen to be a learning platform that makes me a better gardener, cook and creative. My intention is for my garden projects to be a source of exercise and healthy activity. My intention is for the garden to teach my kids to understand where their food actually comes from and to respect Earth’s resources. My intention is for our garden to connect us to the cycles of day and night, the seasons, and the year. My intention is for a huge amount of the food that my family eats this year to originate in this piece of earth we have claimed as our own. My intention is that my garden inspires a plethora of creative recipes and ideas.
Lastly, my intention is that this blog, this platform, will record and share my year-long garden journey…my step-by step processes, my successes, my oops-a-daisies, my discoveries, my creations, and my lessons learned…so that I can help others to find the same healing and happiness I have found in my own garden and kitchen.
Like everything else in life, if you don’t plan ahead, then you are always one step behind and constantly in catch up mode. Vacations get in the way of nurturing seed starters, or you realize you have one week to clean out the beds and get the starters in the ground before it’s too hot, and now you are completely overwhelmed with the amount of work, rather than spreading out the work over a reasonable number of weeks. Planning ahead is how you avoid the inevitable excuse of, “I’m too busy to garden.”
So, I sit here on a cold and very rainy January day in Oregon. I am looking out at my wet and soggy garden, and all I see through the puddles and mud is a new year of garden potential laying ahead of me. So, in the spirit of New Year’s intentions, we are going to increase our chances for garden success by planning ahead. Hang out here with me for a while and I will show you how to do it.
Step One: Start with the End in Mind
What do I mean by that? I mean, start with what you want to accomplish by the END of this year. What new skills or tools do you want to learn? What do you want to grow from seed and what do you want to plant as starts? What new preservation methods are you interested in? What does your vacation planning look like? What garden projects do you want to take on? Do you want to build more garden space? Do you need to do some garden clearing and cleaning? Do you want to build a new greenhouse? Get a garden journal and create a wish list so you can start prioritizing and recording what materials, tools, and resources you need to tackle these projects.
Also note what vacations, life changes or big events you have coming up in the new year. If you know about it, take note and plan to plan around it. If not, these big events can make it impossible to be available for things like nurturing tiny tomato starts that need daily attention.
Before deciding whether to grow starts from seed, I check my spring travel schedule to make sure I will be here during the time they need the most care and nurturing.
Step Two: Take a Look Back
This is where the importance of journaling, notes, and calendars come into play. I started keeping a garden calendar journal and calendar a couple of years ago and it has been key to any little success I claim. If you don’t have a garden journal or calendar yet, don’t sweat it. There is no time like the present to start one. Make this your “Year One” of garden tracking so you have it as a resource next year. Record every detail from the garden, and some details from the kitchen.
What’s In My Garden Journal?
What seeds and plants I bought, pictures of the plant with the proper name, where I planted them, when I planted them, how I planted them, how many I planted, when seeds germinated, How many germinated, what seeds didn’t germinate, growth progress, plant productivity, pests and fungal issues, weather milestones, (like heat spells and first frost), when and what I harvest, what I make and preserve with the harvest and when, vacations I plan to take, anticipated life events, busy times of year at work, recurring work deadlines…
…You get the idea.
Last year we had a wonderfully warm March, so assuming the cold weather was done, I planted all of my cool weather plant seeds the last weekend of March. Well, now I can look back in my garden journal and see that after all that work, on April 11th we had three inches of snow, and by April 13th we were in the middle of a two-day hailstorm. Now I can say, “lesson learned” and avoid the same mistake this year.
Step Three: What Do You Want to Grow
Learn what does and does not grow in your region. As a beginner and still today, my favorite gardening resource is the growing chart I can get from my local plant nursery. Here in Oregon, we have a local business called Portland Nursery, and they are a bountiful resource of information, tools, seeds, and plants. My favorite tool is their Planting Calendar which clearly identifies which vegetables and fruits will grow best in this region, when planted during each month of the year. Identify your best local nurseries and search on their websites for Planting Calendars. We will talk more about the Planting Calendar later.
Looking back at the past year or two, if a plant’s location and production was successful, and you ate or otherwise used the harvest, plan to keep it in or near the same spot and perhaps multiply the plants. If a plant’s location and production left much to be desired, but you did actually use whatever little bit you could get from the plant, then try again, but in a new location. Lastly if a plant’s location and production was terrible and you or your family couldn’t have cared less, it will not be part of this year’s garden, so you can make room for something new.
Questions to ask yourself to determine what should I plant and how much should I plant:
Does my family love this food? Do my kids eat them off the plant before I can harvest?
How often do we eat this food? Do I have lots of great recipes to use it?
Do I know how to easily and quickly preserve this food, if we have excess?
Is there one harvest or can I harvest it all season? Will I need staggered plantings?
How much does one plant yield? How large does each plant get?
Have I successfully grown it in the past or is this experimental?
Did we throw any of this food out last year or leave any of it to rot or go to seed?
Foods I grow in abundance, with lots of plants:
Tomatoes (especially grape or cherry varieties)
Potatoes (especially Yukon Gold)
Onions, Scallions, Leeks, Garlic
Snap Peas
Kale, Lettuce
Carrots
Hot Peppers
Food I grow, but only need a couple plants:
Zucchini, Summer Squash
Cucumber
Foods I have tried with varied success, so I only have one plant or a small grouping:
Japanese Eggplant
Delicata Squash
Fennel
Tomatillos
Foods I tried but have trouble growing, so I have deemed them not worth it:
Green beans
Pumpkins
Melons
Sweet peppers
Sweet peas
Step Four: Where You Want to Grow
If you don’t record exactly where you planted, you will forget over time. I prefer to get out the old pencil and paper and draw it out the old-fashioned way. I am in interior designer by trade, so it is tempting to go all technical on this one and bring out my mad CAD skills, but there is a beautiful element of experimentation, ideation, and brainstorming to this, so I like to treat it as a sketching exercise. Plus, there is something nostalgic about putting pencil to paper and having to use an eraser when you change your mind. Only at the end of my planning do I commit it to ink.
Refer back to your garden journal to see where plants have done the best over the past couple of years. Replant in successful locations, but also experiment with new locations. One, you might find an even better growing spot for that particular plant, but it also helps you rotate plants around year to year, which is good for the soil and your plants. If you use garden bags like I do, sketches over time show how easy it is to relocate them year to year, or even through the course of one growing season, to experiment with sun and shade and how a little shift in location can change how a plant grows and produces.
Keep all your garden planning sketches. Reference them year to year to inspire your next garden layout and design.
Consider Companion Planting
Companion planting is planting certain plants adjacent to each other to the benefit of both plants. I don’t know how scientific it is, but often one plant will deflect pests from the other, or serve as a growing support, or add beneficial nutrients to the soil for the other. Examples of easy companion planting I use every year are:
Marigolds in each of my stock tanks, adjacent to pretty much any vegetable.
Basil and tomatoes.
Basil and peppers.
Onions and Lettuce
Corn and green beans.
We get armies of slugs here, so a companion planting I’m going to try this year is mint with lettuce and kale, to repel the slugs from my greens. I will let you know how it goes.
Just as you should consider companion planting, you should also research and consider which plants are detrimental to each other and use that in your planning.
Consider Light and Shade
Some plants want lots of sun, like tomatoes, and others don’t, like lettuce. When planting, consider how the size of plants will impact access to sunlight for other plants. For example, I will plant lettuce behind my tomatoes or under a trellis of snap peas to protect the lettuce from the intense mid-day summer sun.
Step Five: Planting Timeline
This is when I start to fill in my 2023 gardening calendar. I use a different color for each type of event. Vacations are one color, notable weather events from the past year are another color, timelines for larger projects are yet another. Anything you know now, that could impact your garden plans later, should go into the calendar so you can plan around them.
Also, remember the Planting Calendar from my local nursery I mentioned earlier? This is where it comes into play. After reviewing their Planting Calendar, I highlight in yellow what I want to grow this year. I then look back at when I planted those foods the previous year. If it was successful, I make a note in this year’s gardening calendar, on the same day, or in the same week, to plant that food at that time. Of course, other factors might influence when I actually plant, such as weather, but I’m increasing my chances of success by getting it on the garden calendar and planning ahead.
Identify your best local nurseries and search on their websites for Planting Calendars. Print the calendar and highlight everything you want to grow. Put this in your own garden calendar and reference it every month to stay ahead of what comes next.
Step Six: Prepare Your Spaces
By this, I mean prepare BOTH your physical spaces and your mental spaces. Gardening preparation is a time for cleaning out, renewal, starting over, and a clean slate. What happened last year doesn’t matter this year, as long as you learn from it. Prepare for this year’s victories, but also be ready to make all new mistakes.
It reminds me of a line from a recent Rachel Hollis podcast. (Side note: Yes, I absolutely love her.) She referenced a saying, “The warrior who sweats more in peacetime, bleeds less in wartime”. Not to be overly dramatic, but that’s how I feel about gardening. The more I can prepare now, the easier, more successful, and more rewarding this will have been, come next September.
Ideas to get your garden spaces in order:
Inventory your supplies. Start stocking up on anything you are out of or anything that is no longer useable. With how expensive everything is these days, it’s nice to spread out the costs. This also gives you time to be more creative about where you can save.
Inventory your equipment. Are your tools still in good condition? Is there a new tool or gadget you didn’t have last year and wish you did? For me, most recently, that was a soil tester. Make a wish list of items to be replaced or new gadgets to purchase or borrow.
Identify lost or overlooked garden treasure. The past couple of years I have stepped over a huge, unkept pile of hay left in our greenhouse by the past homeowners. Every year I look at it and think about how many mice it is attracting. The other day I was cleaning out the greenhouse, planning to compost the pile, when I realized I was looking at potential pile of mulch cover for this year’s garden beds. Do you have any trash in your garden spaces that could be this year’s garden treasure?
Clear out the clutter. Have you collected hundreds of seedling pots? Put them on Buy Nothing or Craigslist to clear space in your shed. Are there things in your gardening space you swore you would use, but now they are just deteriorating? Pitch or recycle them. Make as much space in your gardening spaces as possible.
Inventory your seeds. Pull out your box of old seed packets and evaluate what could be used again this year and what is best to pitch. If seeds are stored in a cool, dark and dry spot, I have been able to use them for up to three years, but I do find by the third year, some do not produce as reliably. It’s not always worth wasting the garden space to try out old seeds, so identify which seeds you know you want to replace for this year.
Step Seven: The Fun Part
You have set your garden intentions for the year. You have evaluated what you want to grow, where you want to grow it, and how much. You know what you can easily preserve and put away for winter. You have ideas for what new preserving methods you want to try. And you have cleaned out the old and made room for the new. Now, it’s time for the fun part…digging into your seed catalogs and ordering your seeds for this year’s garden.
I have been known to buy seeds everywhere, from Dollar Tree, to Lowes, to online boutique seed companies. For the best quality and access to hundreds of hybrid and heirloom varietals, my favorite places to purchase seeds are my local nursery and online from Park Seed and Greenpatch Organic Seeds.
I encourage you to have fun with your seeds this year. Purchase some old reliables, but try something completely new. Diversify your garden, your recipes and your diet. Also, be sure to choose varietals specific to your growing conditions, whether in containers, in the ground, on a patio, or in a windowsill. Lastly, look for varietals that grow best in your region or climate.
Someone once asked me why I eat the way I do…why I don’t cook meat and why I eat mostly vegetarian. I thought about it for a minute and my response was, “Because we are what we eat, and I don’t want to be beige. I want to be as colorful as possible.”
So, this year my challenge to you is to take the “You are what you eat,” saying to heart, and be the most colorful version of yourself possible. And the best place to start is with your seeds…so choose varietals that are just like your vision of your best self…vibrant, interesting, bountiful, strong, and absolutely beautiful both inside and out.