Where to start: planning your 2021 garden
It’s that time of year when we are inside most days. There’s less daylight and most of us are dreaming about getting outside, planting and growing.
Though you may not be able to go outside and start planting you CAN start PLANNING for your garden.
This means you can dream up... plan... save & budget... all of that good stuff that will inspire your creativity and motivation for when the time comes to get your hands dirty.
Keep reading on how I recommend planning for your 2021 garden or you can jump to the link and watch the video on YouTube.
The first thing I’d recommend is coming up with your goal for gardening. Get a paper and pen or in your mind think about what you want to achieve out of your garden this year.
Do you want to practice?
Are you growing to eat?
Do you want flowers you can cut and put on your nightstand?
Or is your goal just to learn how to start and grow a healthy plant.
No matter if you just plan to grow one vegetable in a container or do a bit of flower gardening today’s post is about how I recommend setting that up for you.
Now that you’ve got your goal in mind you can decide where it’s going to grow.
I have a decent sized suburban backyard with a few semi-raised garden beds that I’m going to grow in. But, gardens could be as small as a pot on your windowsill up to full blown acre of land.
Now we know what’s the goal how much space we have to work in and we can do the fun part which is shopping for seeds.
If you are going to be at planting outdoors or having a container on your balcony you want to keep in mind your frost dates and your zone you can simply Google your ZIP Code zone and frost dates and have those in mind while you’re looking at varieties of seeds.
Since the pandemic and quarantine head there has been an abundance of these compact seed bundles you can purchase on Amazon and places like. Since I am going to be growing a substantial variety I decided to go with one of those survival see the bundles for this year.
&& then order smaller bundles of the flower varieties I want.
Okay, now you’ve got your goal in mind.. you’ve got your list of seeds.. they are ordered and on their way... you can move onto the budgeting for the tools and soil. If you’re like me I like to visually have it written out and drawn so I can understand where things are going to be planted .. how they’re planted ... who they’re planted with and when harvesting can begin.
If you’re using containers, raise beds are in ground planting having a sketch or a list helps you determine how many seeds or plants you’ll need in for your garden. The space you need for each plant is easily obtain from the seed packet the label or online. If you haven’t garden before I recommend sketching your space. Then make an observation of the amount of sun or when and we’re that spot gets sun and for how long. This will help you determine your shady and sunny areas.
Your mindful planning efforts are ready!
Though there’s beauty in stumbling into gardening I will say that planning your garden can really up level your gardening process and experience. Your pages can be a place where you keep your:
records
your notes
and anything that relates to your garden.
You’ll actually find yourself referring to it from year to year with a sense of achievement and memory.
If you’ve gotten some ideas from this post on how you're planning a 2021 garden do me a favor and pin this to help others who may need some advice too!
