Spring Garden Planning
I’m writing this on March 29. Technically, I should be way further along with my spring garden but it’s been incredibly rainy and as I’ve decided to implement some new tactics, I’ve been spending more time than usual planning my spring garden.
The first major change I’m making is that I’m doing less seed starting indoors. Last year, I spent months nurturing little seedlings under grow lights, weeks, hardening them off, lots of time transplanting them into my garden beds, and then feeling very discouraged as the squirrels, birds, and lizards used my garden as a salad bar and playground. More on that in this post.
I decided to only attempt to grow wildflowers and pollinators in areas not protected from our backyard wildlife. Not only that, I decided to go completely rogue and use the “chaos garden” technique to plant the seeds. Here’s my YouTube video all about that:
This all happened about a month ago. So far, I’m seeing a bunch of the poppies and some marigolds sprouting up (intermingled with the weeds I’m trying not to worry about too much). I can tell that the birds and squirrels have been attacking some of them but I’m optimistic that I’ll be seeing some pretty blooms soon.
I first learned about chaos gardening from one of my favorite gardeners that I discovered on TikTok. Her name is Meg. She’s probably on most social media channels but you may want to check out her YouTube videos here: Meg Grows Plants She’s one of the most inspirational gardeners I’ve found and I’ve learned so much from her content.
Come to think of it, I’ve learned quite a bit about gardening from YouTube! Here are a few more of my favorite channels I regularly watch for informative and entertaining gardening content.
Gardenary: Nicole Burke’s channel. She’s built a garden consulting business which is pretty cool. She also makes videos telling you what NOT to buy at larger garden centers. Often young plants that are too mature to transplant and thrive successfully. I also love her website: Gardenary.com. It has all kinds of informative info about planning your garden. She’s a wealth of knowledge.
Epic Gardening: With almost 3 million subscribers…the name pretty much says it all! And, Meg from Meg Grows Plants is also one of his collaborators.
My original plan for my spring garden was to direct sow everything but then I remembered that you really need to start tomatoes and peppers indoors before transplanting outdoors, so this year I’m going to try 2 kinds of tomatoes, sweet million and sungold cherry. I’ll also start some Italian sweet pepper indoors. Since I love tomatoes and peppers, it will be worth the exra work to start them indoors.
I had decent luck with herbs last year, so this year I’m going to, once again, plant peppermint, purple opal basil, and cilantro. I’m also going to try dill for the first time. The only herb that survived last year was my rosemary. These are all herbs that I really enjoy eating and cooking with, so I’m looking forward to the fresh crop this season.
Root vegetables are a favorite of mine for eating raw and cooking. This year, I’m going to plant rainbow carrots, radishes, beets, and watermelon radishes. I’m very excited about the watermelon radishes. Mainly becuase they are so pretty but I will have to wait until the weather heats up into summer to plant them. I had mixed luck with the carrots and radishes last year. Unfortunately, the pests destroyed all of my beets before they could produce.
For lettuces, I’m going to start with some arugula (another one that was pretty successful for me last year) and try some jade gem for the first time. I love gem lettuces and really hope they grow well in my spring garden this year.
Finally, I’ll plant Persian baby cucumbers (one of my favorite snacks), zucchini, and sugar snap peas.
I’ve got all of my seeds ready to go! Now to plan the layout.
Right now, I have two 4×4’ by 6” raised beds that will be on the ground. Three 4×2’ raised planters. One 3-tiered planter and One 4-tiered planter. I’m still figuring out what’s going to be planted where, but I’ll most likely use the tiered planters for the herbs as I did last year.
One of my favorite apps for garden planning is called Planter. With this app you can create different gardens and the app will help you by letting you know how many plant will fit in the space and whether or not they are good companions. If you like apps to help keep you organized, you may want to check this one out. It’s been particularly helpful to remind me when I planted seeds so I can know if they’re on track to harvest when expected
Perhaps the most exciting addition to my back yard garden this year is my 20x10x6.6” Quictent Greenhouse! You can check it out on the link at the bottom of this post. Here’s a sneak peek of that:
I’m planning a future post all about it but I am hoping the time and energy I’ve put into assembling it, anchoring it down, and outfitting it to house my garden will be worth it. Fingers crossed! More to come.
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Quictent Upgraded 20x10x6.6 FT Large Walk-in Greenhouse for Outdoors: https://amzn.to/3JRbiDe
