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Beating the Gardener's Winter Blues

© Tracy Nagy

Now we have all survived the holiday rush and are starting to settle down for a long winter, at least in my cold zone 5. What does the gardener do now when it is too early to start seeds and too cold to do anything outside?

Well, we plan, and review, and plan some more. This past March I posted an article on "Planning Your Vegetable Garden", and now would be a good time to review some key considerations that might help. This is a good time to do this as many of us will be starting seeds indoors starting in late February.

First, we need to review our failures and successes from this past season. Maybe potatoes are not the thing to grow as they all got eaten up by beatles and nothing seemed to help. Or perhaps, we need to move those tomatoes into a more sunny spot, once we noticed that the tree leafed out pretty good and covered their sun. In my garden, I decided that melons don't do well under the beech tree, and the peppers in the middle were hounded by the rabbits until I fenced them off.

Next, we look at our successes. The potatoes really did well by the fence in my garden, so I draw my plan and put them there again for next season. The zuchinni did the same, so I put it by the fence as well. What did well in your garden? Write down those crops that did well and where it did well.

Now we turn to the seed catalogues that have been building up since October or before. What I need to keep rememebering is how much time I have. I always am more ambitious then I have time. So I limit myself to maybe a few new varieities - since I always feel the need to experiment, and then re-order only those varieties that I was unable to collect seeds from. As you page through your seed catalogues start writing down everything that you want to do. Don't pause to think, don't limit yourself at all at this stage. Just go wild. Once you are done with that you put aside your catalogues - Now this is key. You can't add to your list anymore- at least not yet.

At this stage you are limiting it to what is reasonable with your own personal time constraints and garden size. Now you are reviewing you list and thinking seriously about maintenance and sun considerations and priority in your garden scheme. That melon sounds really good but do you have a good spot with full sun and rich soil? If not, either move on or be prepared to do a little extra work to get it to where you want it to be. Here we are taking out our drawing paper and sketching the garden we dream about.

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