Most Northern gardens are covered with a blanket of snow and the furthest thing from your mind is growing a vegetable garden and yet this is the perfect time to start thinking about next year’s garden.

 

Planning is an important step in growing a successful, bountiful garden and what better time than now to start planning?

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Part of planning next years garden is going over this year’s garden.

 

What plants and varieties did well this past spring/summer, and then, which ones were disappointing and did not live up to what you had hoped for?

 

 At home, we like to keep the seed packages, and also write variety names on plant labels to help remember what we planted. It is also a good idea to have a garden journal and draw up a plan of the garden that includes what was planted where. It can be as detailed as you want it. You can have each row with type of plant and variety name listed on it. Or you could just divide it into sections and have a brassica (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, kohlrabi etc.) section, a root crop (carrots, beets)area, legumes (peas, beans) section, potatoes would make up another section, alliums (onion, leeks, chives, shallots, garlic) could be another section and so on.

 

Planting the garden in sections makes it easier for crop rotation which is important for producing healthy crops. Rotating crops is helpful because different vegetables take out different nutrients from the soil and so by rotating the crops the soil does not become depleted Also,  different crops attract different pests and have different diseases so by moving the crops around on a yearly basis this should help eliminate these problems which in turn would mean there should be less use of chemicals.

 

This is the time of year when you can prepare a ‘wish list’ of vegetables that you would like to try for next year.

 

Look over the produce section in the grocery store and if you go out for dinner check out the veggies on the menu. A while back I heard about golden beets and so last summer we grew the golden beets in the garden and they did really well. Golden beets tend to be sweeter and milder than the red beets and you don’t have to worry about the red beets staining your hands. The golden beets did really well and will be in the garden again next year!

 

When making out a list of vegetables you would like in the garden you need to do some research. Not all vegetables will grow well in our Prince George climate. We have a short growing season and cool night temperatures, so you want varieties that mature in a short amount of time. Growing transplants also help lengthen the growing season. By starting seeds earlier indoors and then planting the young plants outdoors when temperatures warm up can add to the growing season.

 

This is also a good time of year to look over the landscape. Now that the snow has covered perennials, and bulbs and annuals are just a memory, the ‘bones’ of the landscape stand out. Large trees, shrubs and hardscape are the base of a landscape and is what you work around. You can plan now what you might want to add or change and even decide what colour scheme you plan using on for next year’s containers and flowerbeds.

 

There are lots of books available including the books by the late ‘Lois Hole’ from Edmonton Alberta who wrote books for plant material that is hardy for our Northern zone 3 climate.