Our winter plant strategy for spring – Don’t have one? try ours.

While everyone is counting down hours to New Years we’re counting down days ’til spring

No that’s not our whole winter plant strategy, but by today’s count it’s just 79 days until the spring equinox on March 20th. While that’s usually on the cold side to do much hardcore outdoor gardening, at least here in the north. east (USDA frost dates vary of course) there’s lots of planning (and planting) to be done between now and then.

December 31st 2017 and the polar vortex is giving us the shivers

Current forecast for the next week is… cold. Really cold. Like the kind of cold where when you go to walk the dog in the morning, you consider how much actual effort it would be to toilet train a pug. It is winter time in New Jersey so we expect this sort of thing, but still kind of gets us down.

All the indoor leaf babies are doing very well. The spider plant babies are ready to be given away as house warming or office gifts and just about everything is slowly sipping water during our measly nine hours and seventeen minutes of sunlight.  This time of year, they slow their roll and drink a lot less.  Like a lot less. Our weekly garden routine is now down to a bare minimum giving us time to research, read write and fantasize about the spring.

So what to do while the leaf babies sleep? Start our plant strategy for spring of course

The end of the year is always SO busy. First there’s harvest, then there’s cleanup, then holidays and cooking and parties. It gets to be a little too busy and even though we enjoy all the things, it always seems to bunch up there for a bit. And now we get a nice long break. The only big events between now and spring are Valentine’s and St. Paddy’s day which gives us lots of time to create and implement a spring plant strategy.

Step 1 – Learning from our mistakes and successes.

What went wrong last year? Ugh, what didn’t. There was too much rain in the beginning of the season and we should have given everyone a dose or two of anti-fungal like cupric oxide (depending on the plant obviously).  Then our lack of work-life balance kicked in and we left the weeds to become invasive. Japanese hops, crabgrass poison ivy and Virginia creeper everywhere. We lost a bunch of rows to the fuzzy beasts and got no corn or beans… the tomatoes that we started in the winter did … alright. The crop rotation strategy worked out well. No pepper flies this year after taking two years off , next year will be an off year for peppers, and should be okay for squash.

This Cool looking orange and black bug is actually moth that can fly like a hornet (but doesn’t sting) and can do a lot of damage to your squash plants

Step 2 – gardening real estate

Our gardens tend to change shape slowly. Last year we took out an overgrown dyanthus bed, added a tiny pollinator garden, set up new trellises for our tomatoes and grape vine and found a spot for our newly adopted fig tree. Which sounds like a lot but it really wasn’t. These were more impulsive projects when we got ants in our pants and needed something to do. In 2018 we want to be a little more strategic and use the cold,slow, winter to our advantage.

First off is looking at what we have to work with.  We’re not planning to get an allotment in the community garden this year, but we are looking to rework some of the space we already have. We started a few edge beds in a nice sunny section of they back yard that we’ve really outgrown.  They’re three little three by thirty foot beds.  We’re going to expand them this year.  Using map measurements we figure we’ll end up with a space of about six times that size for veggies. Maybe with proper fencing and fortification we can keep out the beasties.  This will mean of course that we will need to re-arbor the grape vine… again, but that’s okay because last year’s was only temporary.

Next up are flower beds.  There’s a vinca bed next to the front porch that needs some TLC. Last summer while we weren’t looking some Virginia creeper found its way in there.  It may in fact be time to re-home the vinca and re-purpose that bed for an evergreen shrub. And the impromptu pollinator bed we started last spring needs a little somethin’ somethin.

Step 3 – Tool and supply inventory time

No plant strategy is complete without tools and garden supplies. We never have everything we need and a trip to the hardware store in February or early March is a much needed break. Also keeping our eyes on online prices for things we know we need next year. Twine, fencing, lumber (non treated), ground stakes. It’s a big list but fortunately most of the stuff is inexpensive or DIY.  Since this year’s plant strategy includes expanding a bed by a bit, we’ll probably rent a tiller when the time comes unless we can find a used one on the cheap.

Step 4 – Plants

This is where we get really carried away. We already know peppers are going to be off this yer to avoid pepper flies. and that squash is probably going to be okay because the vine borers were a 2016 problem and should be gone this year.

According to the national gardening association plant strategy these are the planting dates for the plants in our 2018 spring plant strategy. But based on experience we know a little better.

So we’ve modified the schedule accordingly

It looks a lot like a shock and awe approach plant strategy to gardening but here’s what we figured out. While NOAA, the USDA and the National Gardening association agree that our little slice of growing zone 6b is in no danger of frost after April 15th or so, we’ve found that most often we still get frost warnings as late as May 1.  Mom always said that Mothers’ day was the real cut off. So, almost everything starts off inside in a very controlled environment under grow lights. Then as the days get warm enough we start to bring things out to harden off.  But still in their planters so we can bring them in  or move them to safety for wind and frost warnings. And then, once we’re sure its safe and the leaf babies are strong enough, they can start. Now, you’d think this would extend the growing season or push up harvest dates some, but in our experience, not so much. this is more our version of helicopter leaf parenting.

Step 5 – Journaling and blogging

We tend to use the forum and twitter as a journal for bugs, plants, diseases, freebies, coupons and deals, interesting articles we find on the internet and things like that. When we get time we post an article on a project or a guide to an activity. This year we’re already queuing up ideas on:

• indoor gardening
• planting
• tool reviews
• our expansion project

If you have an idea for that you’d like us to write about, or something you’d like to write about as a guest post, let us know