Dreaming + Planning
January 24, 2012
Do you find yourself getting lost in garden dreams?
Despite the snow and the cold, the dreariness and the lack of daylight, this is when my imagination runs wild.
What will I plant? How can I design the garden? What will I finally do this year?
It’s a time of possibilities. If you find yourself getting lost in the possibilities, just go with it. Relish it. When it’s hot and you’re losing the battle against weeds, the fantasy will be over.
Here are some of my dreams:
- Use a cold frame, which will be invaluable for hardening off seedlings while I’m away during the day and extending the growing period for certain crops.
- Grow with an eye for winter. It’s important that I boost the number of things that can be dried, frozen, and canned.
- More mulch! The best year I ever had was when I piled dried grass clippings on as mulch. My watering and weeding duties were greatly reduced. This year I’ll turn to hay and straw, newspaper, and whatever grass clippings I can gather.
- Grow what we’ll eat. Over the years I’ve figured out what we like to eat, and what ends up in the compost as waste. As much as I feel like I should grow kale, the reality is it won’t get eaten. I’m OK with being real.
- Go vertical! Even though I have a spacious garden, there are some squash and melon plants that I don’t want dominating the garden.
Here in zone 6 I plant my seeds indoors at the end of February. I have a month to finalize my list, go through my seed collection, order new seeds, and organize my garden layout.
Until then, dream on!
2 Comments
leave one →
The Suburban Farm 
Your post has inspired me to start planning the garden for this year. Normally I wait until we are deep into the New England winter, but this year seems to be more like spring and I didn’t realize seed starting is right around the corner. I built 2 cold frames (mini-greenhouses) a couple years ago that have worked out great. They are useful for starting seeds early and also growing lettuce, cabbage, brocccoli, carrots and kale throughout the winter. They more or less preserve the crops, because when the temps drop the growing pretty much slows way down, but it is nice picking fresh greens in December – January! This year my big projects will be expanding and fencing in the garden, building a garden shed and building a 20′ high tunnel for winter growing (and also posting more on my blog which I never seem to find the time to do!) I love reading your posts, I am also a CT gardener trying to expand into small scale organic farming!
Rob, I can’t wait to see what you come up with for garden plans this year. I’ll be sure to post about my experience with cold frames!