I hope you are enjoying bird watching this winter as well as looking ahead to warmer weather and another gardening season.
As the bitter cold weather continues, it may be hard to shift your focus to gardening. However, it is a good time to start thinking about which vegetables you may want to plant this year and how to plan for a successful garden.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the 2015 seed catalogs that I have received (http://dansgardening.blogspot.com/2014/12/happy-new-yeara-first-look-at-2015-seed.html). Since then I have received another one plus a garden supply catalog:
Also, seeds and seed starting supplies are starting to appear in the stores. To be honest I purchase most seeds locally since I find them less expensive, however for certain varieties such as heirloom tomatoes, I do use the catalogs.
The first step is to decide which seeds from previous years are still viable. If you are a first time gardener, you won't have to worry about this step. My general rule of thumb is to throw away seeds more than a year old. In other words, this year I will keep seeds dated 2014 and newer. Some seeds will keep beyond a year, but I like to play it safe since so much time and effort goes into the gardening process. Minimizing re-planting will make your gardening experience much better and your garden more productive.
It is also helpful to organize your seeds into groupings, for example lettuces/greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, etc. Rubber bands work well for this purpose and it helps to keep your seed box a lot neater.
Below is a video from the Jung Seed Co. that will benefit new and experienced gardeners alike. It has many tips regarding improving the soil, maximizing garden yield, controlling weeds and pests, succession planting, starting plants early indoors, and using a great garden planning tool (http://gardenplanner.jungseed.com/). It will get you thinking about the growing season coming up:
If you are a first time gardener, I would suggest starting small so you won't get overwhelmed. I started small myself, and gradually increased my garden sizes over the years. I am now at the point where I might start to decrease my gardening effort since my children are grown and we don't need as many veggies as we once did.
In future posts I will discuss starting seeds indoors and also winter sowing, a technique used to start seeds outside in the dead of winter.
Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
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