Garden Planning

In a few weeks, we will be making our annual trip to the Wisconsin Garden and Landscape Expo. Since we use that trip as an opportunity to buy seeds for the garden, it was time to think about what we wanted to grow. In the fall, Maggie had sworn that this year, we would plant less.

We had already bought a packet of seeds here and there, including herbs, English Cucumbers, and Cosmos. We pulled those out, along with the seed packets purchased in previous years. Our first step was to lay out the garden and decide what we wanted to plant and where. Last year, I made a poster board with a sketch of our garden. We removed the small post-it notes marking last year's garden, and started to rearrange things in the paper garden. It quickly became apparent that we would not, in fact, be planting less this year. We did eliminate a few items that had not done well in the past, like broccoli and watermelon, and decided on fewer tomatoes and squash.

With the rough plan in place, we went through the seed packets, picking out varieties we wanted to plant, referring to our garden journal to remind us what we had tried in the past. Maggie always wants to plant one of everything, but this year we limited our selections to focus on what worked well in past gardens. We did decide to try a couple of new tomato and winter squash varieties for fun. The plan is to limit our seed purchases to three: Delicata Squash, Dragon Beans, and Sungold Cherry Tomatoes, but it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the choices on the seed racks.

Our last step was to separate the direct-sow seeds from those we will need to start indoors. In this Year of Perennials, I plan to start lavender and prairie plants soon, and I think herbs also get an early start. The rest of the seeds can wait until March and April.