Winter Garden Planning: Get Seeds in Time

Now is the time to begin planning your garden for this summer. I know it may seem a little early, but you never can be too early in the planning stage. Planning a garden requires that you have a concept, a design and compatible plants.

Concept:

There are a lot of garden concepts. I will give a short list of the different ones around which to plan your garden and then go into to depth in later articles.

Survivalist garden and vegetable garden are very similar. A survivalist garden will contain more vegetables that will keep the winter through. When I was younger and in college, we lived in the country with five glorious acres. We kept three acres natural, meaning we didn't mow, had an acre of garden, and scattered throughout the area and around the garden perimeter were fruit trees. We bought the property with the trees and didn't plant them, so they were already bearing fruit. Our garden fed us the entire winter. We composted, raised loofa sponge plants, and at the end of the season brought plants in to provide fresh herbs and bush tomatoes all winter. (The tomatoes needed to be planted late in the season for this to work.) This garden was more than a vegetable garden. It was a survivalist garden. Last summer I found containers of tomato plants on sale for a quarter at the tail end of planting season. This was not even a real garden...but it was dirt-cheap tomatoes all summer.

A gift garden is planned around gifts for next Christmas. If you have a special pickle recipe that you would like to give the following year then by all means grow those cucumbers. What about herbal gifts or vinegars for others? You can grow your own sponges and make loofa soap as gifts. Here is a link to one of the article that I wrote on gifts from the garden.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/431040/growing_christmas_gifts_in_the_garden.html

An herb garden is a wonderful idea. It can supply you with hummingbirds and bumbly bees as well as delightfully beautiful herbs. If you have a small area or no yard, you can container garden.