How to make winter the best season for garden planning

“The garden year has no beginning and no end.”

This quote by Elizabeth Lawrence rings true. Although we put our gardens to bed for the winter, various garden activities continue. Fortunately, with much less effort.

Now begins a quieter season of reflection, review, dreaming and planning for next year’s garden. Unfortunately, many gardeners overlook this step, which is as enjoyable as digging in the soil and vital to success the following year.

If you take a few moments to reflect on your garden’s performance and do a little planning, you’ll be better prepared next season. Here are some tips to get you started.

The most useful tool in the shed

My most valuable gardening tool isn’t steel – it’s my garden journal.

I write at least weekly during the season, track weather and frost dates, planting and harvesting dates, and most importantly, my garden’s successes and challenges. This gives me a record of what worked and what didn’t, allowing me to improve my garden each year.

My journal also helps me remember details like plant varieties and locations. No more guessing plant names or, as I have done many times, digging into a supposedly empty spot only to find plant roots or bulbs.

A log makes it easy to keep track of fertilization, soil amendment, crop rotations, seed germination and transplant dates, and a million other details that are easy to forget over time.

Whether you prefer pen and paper, tablet computer, voice recording or photos, journaling helps you track your garden’s progress through the seasons and years. If you haven’t started one yet, now is the perfect time.

Assess your current garden

The first steps to planning next season’s garden are to evaluate the past season and grade it. If you can do this while the garden season is still fresh in your mind, you’ll have better information to work from (as opposed to trying to remember those million details in April).

Whether you’ve kept a journal or not, the questions below will help you establish a framework for assessment and planning:

• What successes have you achieved and why? If you can identify a “why” it will help make your successes repeatable.

• What challenges have you faced? Some we can control, like not enough time in the garden, and some we can’t, like weather problems. Understanding the challenges helps you be better prepared.

• What was a failure and why? Don’t get upset about it. Every person who has ever picked up a garden trowel has had failures. These are the best learning opportunities, especially when you can identify the reasons.

Set goals for the next season

After you’ve reviewed and assessed the garden, you’ll set goals and turn your assessment into a plan.

What inspirational ideas do you have that you can incorporate into your garden plan? These don’t have to be major revisions – maybe you’re dreaming of a cut flower bed or want to try growing a new variety of vegetables. I’ve found that when you make a list of goals, you can do this.

I sort my goals into to-dos, would-likes, and a wish list to prioritize my plan. As you begin, consider the following:

• What do you want to grow? Fall is a great time to research new plant varieties and make sure they suit your climate and soil. Make a list of what you want to grow and identify sources for purchasing seeds or plants. Try to buy seeds before the spring rush to avoid running out of items.

• Can you grow more efficiently? Consider growing some plants in containers or vertically to free up space in a small garden. Succession planting and interplanting are two effective ways to grow more, regardless of the size of your garden.

• What needs to be revised or updated? These questions present great possibilities in the garden (and most of my answers end up on the wish list). However, tackling simple tasks like running a soil test, amending the soil, or replacing or repairing tools and supplies can make a big difference in the garden come spring.

Plan your look

You don’t have to be a landscape architect to create a garden layout. Every year I make a simple sketch of my garden and list what goes where. It has become an invaluable resource for crop rotation in my small garden.

If you want something more sophisticated than a pencil sketch, free and paid online tools will create a garden layout for you, including planting times, plant spacing recommendations, succession planting ideas and more. A quick Google search of “garden planning apps” returns many options.

Landscaping your garden each year is essential for vegetable crop rotation, which helps reduce disease and insect infestation and improves soil fertility.

I know from experience that this can be a challenge in small gardens, but try growing different plants in different locations year after year.

A garden layout can also help you plan succession and interplanting, allowing you to get the most out of your garden. Use your layout to indicate when crops have finished producing so you can plant something in his place.

By interplanting, you can identify space in the garden where fast-growing vegetables, such as radishes, can grow among those that take longer to mature, such as tomatoes. No bare soil means fewer weeds and a more productive garden.

As the garden rests for winter, use this quiet time to reflect on the past season and plan for the next to set the stage for future success. You’ll be ready to grow an even better garden when spring arrives. A gardener’s work never stops – it just takes on a different pace.

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Candace Godwin is an Idaho Certified Master Gardener, garden consultant and owner of the Coeur d’Alene Coop (thecoeurdalenecoop.com), which offers seasonal plant sales and articles on gardening and backyard chicken raising.