January can seem really dreary.
Lets face it, its cold and grey out during January most anywhere in the USA. We have been focusing a lot on getting new garden beds laid for spring planting, soil fertility and earth works such as swales. But those require a day where its not raining, and preferably not bitter cold. So what do you do when you can’t get outside? Plan!
Planning what?
Well thats a good question. We have been spending our evenings planning out the spring and summer garden. Using a software can be really helpful (We like Growveg), but paper and pen work just as well if you prefer. While we are planning we pour over seed catalogs and make lists of varietals we would like to grow, putting them into our software as we go. When we are done planning we will make an order for seeds we don’t have in stock.
GrowVeg is really helpful for me because I can tell it how much space I want in a certain vegetable. The software will then tell me how many plants I need for various planting methods, such as row, square foot. etc. This can be great when you are seeding out transplants, which also starts happening this time of year.
So far we have planted 3 trays worth of early spring plants, including arugula, kale, spinach and others. The plan is to put these into the ground come February and continue to plant out through the spring. This will allow us to have weekly harvests during the early gardening months.
When we plant out the extra early veggies we will do so under devices called cold frames. These help protect tender young seedlings and let us get a couple extra weeks of growth in spring and fall. A future post will show how we build these.
What does your winter planning look like for the garden? Let us know in the comments below!
Brittany