Planning Your Garden for 2015

Planning your 2015 garden

During the winter, a lot of gardeners are thinking ahead to what they want to plant in the garden next spring. It is the perfect time for planning and collecting seed catalogs. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind as you’re planning your garden for 2015.

Review Your Garden Journal

It can be a challenge to remember what you planted where, what plants thrived, and what didn’t. That’s when a garden journal comes in handy. A garden journal details your day-to-day gardening activities. Yes, we mean details – tracking everything such as:

• 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 in 2014, now is a great time to review it before you start planning your garden for 2015. 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

There are plenty of seed companies that offer catalogs.

Remember to place your seed order early. You don’t want to be disappointed if the seeds you want are out of stock because you waited to order.

Wild Garden Seed

Wild Garden Seed is an organic seed and vegetable farm in Philomath, Oregon. You might recall seeing them at various farmer’s markets as Gathering Together Farms. Yes, they’re the same folks. Wild Garden Seed has been Oregon Tilth Certified.

Territorial Seed Company

Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove offers a wide variety of organic and non organic vegetable seeds. They also have a fun garden planning tool on their website that is worth checking out.

Adaptive Seeds

Adaptive Seeds was started in 2009 in Sweet Home, Oregon. Adaptive Seeds offers Pacific Northwest grown, open pollinated, organic seeds.

Plan Your Garden Space

You’ve read through your garden journal, and you’ve browsed through your seed catalogs. Now what? Well, it’s time to start planning!

Decide on the vegetables you want to plant. Keep in mind when they’ll have to be planted. If you’re brave enough to start from seed, determine what needs to be started from seed indoors or can be planted right into the ground. Then create your planting schedule.

This part is probably the most fun in the planning process – mapping the garden. There are a lot of apps and online tools that will help you map out your space, or you can go the old fashioned route and create a handwritten map of your garden.

Getting these tasks done early will get your garden off to an excellent start!

As you get your garden ready, Best Buy In Town offers topsoil as well as several different types of compost to replenish the nutrients in the soil and help your garden grow. Give us a call today.

(503)645-6665