Kim Iversen **Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links, which means we receive a small commission if you buy through the link on our website (at no additional cost to you). Using our affiliate links helps support our blog, which means we can provide you more content that you love.
Every year, starting in November the flow of seed catalogues arriving in my mailbox steadily increases, until it is a full on flood by the time we hit March. Long before the flood has arrived, I’ve already ordered my seeds and am in full swing with planting them.
In order to make sure I have access to the largest selection of seeds, I like to spend my Christmas holiday curled up with my seed catalogues and garden plan. By the time I head back to work after New Year’s Day I’ve placed my order and am anxiously awaiting the first arrival.
To help you with your garden planning and planting, we’ve pulled together a Monthly Garden Calendar and Checklist which is linked below. You will also find some things to think about along the way, which we hope will help you move from wherever you are on your gardening journey today to where you would like to be in the future.
If you are just starting on your journey, remember to start small. There is a lot to learn and can become overwhelming if you try to do too much at once. Find those vegetables that you eat most of, and buy a seed packet of those. For your family this might be tomatoes or hot peppers. Start those from seed this year, and see how it goes. Buy the rest of the plants you need for your garden from a local nursery. Then next year add a few new plants to start from seed.
Happy gardening!
December
December is a great time to get started with the garden. Last season’s harvest has been put up, whether dried, canned, or simply in cold storage. The sunset comes early, and the winter darkness invites reflection and cozy evenings by the fire as snow blankets the garden outside.
During this time, if you don’t already have one, sketch out your garden. If you can include measurements this is even better. I have my beds sketched out on graph paper. I’ve even made a template that I simply copy and print off each year.
Armed with the diagram of your garden, you can now start planning what you want to plant in each bed area. I like to rotate what I plant in each bed from year to year, following the crop rotation principles that farmers follow. While none of my beds are that large, the rotation does help to reduce disease and manage soil nutrients.
To help me manage the crop rotation, I have numbered each of the beds on my diagram. Come planting time, I simply follow the plan I made on paper…making some tweaks along the way based on the plants I have available.
Once the garden diagram is done, make a list of plants you want to grow. To help with this, you may find it helpful to check out what vegetables you have in your refrigerator. Keeping a list of the vegetables you frequently buy at the grocery store can also help you decide what to plant in the garden.
Now that you know what you want to plant, and what kind of space you have to work with, start mapping out what to plant where. In other words, where do you want to plant your tomatoes? And how many rows of carrots do you want?
Use this information, along with information on plant spacing (you’ll find this online when you order seeds, or on the back of your seed packet) to determine how many plants you’ll need. For example, if you have 7 foot rows, and are planting peppers, you will need 7 plants to fill the row since they need about a foot per plant.
The final step in December is to order your seeds. Most often you will only need one packet per vegetable since there are quite a few seeds in each packet. If you want to try and grow a few different types of a vegetable, be sure to order a packet of each.
Make a list of each of the vegetables and herbs you are buying. On the list note next to each whether they need to be direct sown in the garden or started from seed. If they can be started indoors, also note the number of days before “last frost” date is recommended for sowing. Use this information, along with your last frost date, to calculate when to sow your seeds indoors. You can find your last frost date, along with a planting calendar using The Old Farmer’s Almanac. They’ve done a great job doing all the calculations for you for common vegetables.
January
I find that January is the quietest time for gardening. My orders are placed, and I’m waiting for the seeds and other items I’ve ordered to arrive. This is a great time to get the seed starting area ready, and to clean all your seed flats if you’ve not done that yet. You can also start a few early herbs.
February
Despite often being the coldest month of the year (or at least feeling like it!), this is the month when things start to heat up with the garden tasks. Depending on what you will be sowing, here in Wisconsin February is the month when you can start a good number of seeds including bell peppers, egg plant, onions and leeks, and even several herbs including thyme.
March
In early march the snow is finally starting to melt near us, and we can finally get outside to start tackling garden projects. This is a great time to prune fruit trees and berries before they start to break dormancy. Even better is to do it in February if you can get the ladder out in the snow. With the warmer weather, it’s also time to spray fruit trees for overwintering pests.
Though I’ve never done it, this is also a great time to start hardening off your cold hardy seedlings. I finally have a setup to help me with this, so I’ll be adding this to my garden routine next year.
To harden off your plants, start by moving them outside for a couple hours a day. Over the course of a week, increase the amount of time they are outdoors during the day. Be sure to bring them in at night to keep them from being killed by nighttime frosts. During the second week, gradually let them stay outside after sunset longer and longer. Keep an eye on the weather, if a hard frost is predicted, bring them in at night. By the end of the second week they should be ok staying out all night, especially by the end of the month.
As soon as you can rake it up, remove the mulch or other ground cover you have on your garden beds. This will allow the soil to start warming up for planting in April. Removing the mulch also helps the soil to dry out, making it easier to work in April.
April
By now most of my seedlings are started and all I have left to sow are the tender melons and fall squash. Starting these much earlier than April would mean I have monster vines to transplant into the garden in May. This would increase the risk of shock to the plant, so best to wait until April to sow them indoors.
If you like to dig your beds to prepare them for planting, this is your chance to do it. I’ve moved to using a no dig method that makes planting and maintenance so much easier. If I don’t have time to spread the compost on the garden in the fall, now is the time I’ll do it. This frees up my compost bins for the new season, and provides valuable nutrients to the soil, reducing the amount of fertilizer I need to use.
Once the compost is down, it’s time to plant any cold hardy plants that have been hardened off. Hardening off ensures that they don’t go into shock moving from your warm cozy interior to the cold harsh outdoors. Once the cold hardy plants are out of the way, I start to harden off the warm loving crops like tomato.
By the end of the month my potatoes have typically arrived in the mail. They go into the ground as soon as I have it ready. This is also when I plant any new fruit trees or berries.
May
Technically we can expect the last killing frost at the Suburban Farmhouse to be around April 30, I typically wait until Mother’s Day weekend to plant any tender plants outside. In part because we’ve been known to have the odd snow storm in early May (you have to love Mother Nature!), and in part because it’s an easy date to remember.
May marks the time to get the rest of my seedlings out into the garden, and to direct sow the remaining vegetables. Even though I could sow them earlier, I often wait until early May to do all the direct sowing. Mostly this is due to my personal time constraints. Carrots and beets could actually be direct sown as early as late March. I’m just not ready then.
June
June is the month to start reaping the rewards of all my hard work. Slowly I can start to harvest some of the herbs, rhubarb is abundant, and the rest of the crops are starting to take off in the garden.
During this month it’s important to keep on top of weeding so they don’t choke out the young plants. I like to spend about 15 minutes each morning pulling out any little weeds so they don’t get too big. I also nip side shoots from the tomatoes while I’m doing my rounds.
Going out before breakfast means I get the task done, and during a time when mosquito activity is at a minimum. Doing it daily means that it doesn’t get too overwhelming, and I can see where help is needed in the garden before things get out of control. I’m working into a rhythm where I can also see what is available to harvest so I know what can be served with our evening meal.
Larger efforts like cleaning up fallen fruit and succession planting are typically left for the weekend when I have more time to get my hands dirty and play in the garden. This is also when I like to take a walk around the yard and check on the ornamental beds as well. This is where I have most of my fruits and berries planted so I check to see what is ready for harvest while I’m doing my rounds. Anything that’s ready comes in and is prepped for freezing, canning, or dehydrating.
On the weekends I also check on the herbs and harvest small amounts for dinner, as well as dehydrating for fall and winter use.
July
July is mainly a continuation of June’s activities. Along with weeding and harvesting berries, sour cherries are now ready to harvest. This typically happens around 4th of July, which means it’s a race to harvest them before the birds eat them all if we’ve gone away for the weekend.
Members of the onion family are also ready to harvest starting in July. Typically shallots and garlic, which are planted in the fall are the first to be harvested. I wait until about two thirds of the row have fallen over to harvest. Later in the month and into August the red and yellow onions start to droop, indicating they are now ready to be pulled from the ground. Leeks can stay until the fall frosts, and in many places can overwinter in the ground. I tried that once, but our ground freezes solid here in Wisconsin, and even though I had heavily mulched the leeks, they broke as I tried to dig them out.
July is also when we can start to harvest early potatoes. This is a moment my husband looks forward to every year…the highly anticipated harvest of the first new potatoes. He’s like a little boy in a candy shop when this happens.
August
Most of the weeds in the garden have given up the ghost by now if I’ve been consistently pulling them up. This means I get to focus my time in the mornings on harvesting the vegetables that are now ripeneing almost faster than we can eat them.
Freezing, canning, and dehydrating are now in full gear. As I’m able I prep things for the dehydrator right away in the morning. That way they can dehydrate all day, and overnight if needed. Then I can start over with a new batch the next morning.
On Fridays, I might start a batch of canning after work in the evening. Otherwise, Friday’s harvest is combined with Saturday’s and processed over the weekend. Anything that I don’t have time to get to during the week, or over the weekend, goes into the freezer for processing later in the fall. This includes a large portion of the tomatoes and berries.
Garlic, shallots, and onions are set on screens in the garage to dry. Depending on my time and mood, I often braid our garlic (I grow softneck garlic. You can’t do this with hardneck garlic). I then hang the braids in our basement over the winter. One year my garlic braid starred in the Dracula play put on by our local high school!
September
Most of the heavy lifting in the garden is on pause during the month of September, with only harvesting and processing to worry about. This is good, because this is when I historically have the most food coming into the kitchen. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and other summer vegetables are maturing rapidly and need to be harvested. Root crops are starting to mature and are in need of harvesting and storing. And the apple and pear trees are ready to be picked.
In addition to our own apple trees which have yet to produce much fruit, we often get a call from a friend inviting us to harvest what’s left on her trees. This typically equates to a trailer load of apples that we then turn into apple juice, cider, apple sauce, pies, and all other things apple related.
Later in the month I start to keep a close eye on the night time temperatures. If frost is predicted I run out and cover the tender crops that have not yet matured or been harvested. Row cover does a great job prolonging the season just enough to help bring these crops in.
I also start to bring in my herbs and citrus trees, slowly reversing the hardening off process. These plants will be overwintered in our front hallway where they can get some sun, and be protected from the extreme cold of winter. Hopefully one of these years the citrus will thank me and actually bear fruit.
October
By now the days are significantly shortening, and the weather is turning cooler. Fall has truly arrived and with it so has the final push for harvesting the garden. All the warm weather crops are dying off, and the cool weather crops are waiting to come in. The garden looks tired and worn out from it’s summer growth sprint. It’s time to give it a well deserved rest.
Any remaining root crops – carrots, potatoes, beets, etc. need to be harvested now and prepared for storage. Potatoes need to be cured before being placed in paper bags and stored in Rubbermaid bins in the basement stairwell. Carrots and beets have their tops removed, leaving a small section of the leaf stem, then into plastic bags and Rubbermaid bins.
All the winter squash is cut from the vine and allowed to cure for a couple of weeks. Then they are moved into the basement storage area until they are turned into pies, ravioli filling, and other wonderful fall treats.
Pole and bush beans also need to be harvested now. I’m not much for green beans, so I grow shelling varieties which sit on the vines until they are dried. They get harvested directly into paper bags. Later in the winter I sit and enjoy a movie on Netflix while shelling and sorting the beans. Eventually they get soaked, cooked, and canned for use in dishes throughout the year.
When the beds are finally emptied, it’s time to prepare the garden for spring planting. Clean up any dead fruit lying around, remove old vegetable stalks, and throw all these into the compost heap. Rake over the beds to remove any loose plant material.
Once the cleanup is done, spread a good layer of finished compost on each bed. I also plant my garlic and shallots at this time. They overwinter in the ground quite well, and it gives them a jumpstart on the next growing season. Cover everything with a layer of mulch and tuck in the garden for its long winter sleep.
November
I try to be finished with the outdoor garden activities by the end of October, mainly because I’m a wimp when it comes to the cold. However, sometimes life gets in the way and I have carryover tasks to complete.
If I’ve not finished harvesting yet, now is absolutely the last chance (at least for me!) to bring in the remaining vegetables. These would typically include the kale, and other cabbage crops as they are the most cold tolerant.
Once the vegetable and herb gardens are fully put to bed, I turn my attention to the fruit trees. While we live in the suburbs we still get quite a few rabbits and deer. And that means the potential for significant winter damage if precautions are not taken. Any garden fence repairs we’ve not gotten to during the growing season need to be taken care of before the snow falls so the deer don’t destroy the fruit trees. We also wrap the trees with quarter inch hardware cloth to protect them from rabbits and voles.
Throughout the fall and winter I check on our stored vegetables, watching for signs of spoilage. Anything that looks like it might be thinking about going bad gets processed or eaten right away. If there are clear signs of spoilage, they are culled from storage and thrown to our compost works.
Now it’s time to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits (and vegetables!) of your labor!
–Kim
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