The weather has turned cold and the leaves have turned crunchy and I’m thinking, as the last of my tomato vines shiver out in their boxes, about next year.
I think that daydreaming about the garden next year may be a substantial part of how I get through the winter, now that I’ve seen gardening for a season and know what I like about it. Some thoughts that are with me now include:
- How to be smart about space? I have a whole box now that really gets only enough light to be a patch for greens, and a strawberry bed that sustains tomatoes beautifully, if crazily. Our potato barrel yielded some potatoes and would probably yield more, with better drainage and fewer potatoes crowding around. I want to add another box, if Husband will agree, and add small, thin window boxes on our front porch for herbs, to take advantage of all the sun we get up there. He also wants to put in some blueberry bushes up there, where we already get a ton of bees.
- How to grow in a timely way? I need to make sure I start mostly greens early next year, not all my seeds at once, and then start my summer peppers and tomatoes at last frost. I want to grow greens early and late, not just early this time, and I would like to choose a spot for some winter squash plants and some sugar snap peas so that my Fall harvest can be a little new and not just more of the spring crops. Mid-summer was a grand bounty this year, but I want to make sure I focus on the book-end seasons in 2017.
- What new plants to grow, and what to give up? I wish my strawberries were more bountiful, but they were a small harvest this year. I want to keep potatoes, tomatoes, butternut squash, carrots, and green peppers… I want a more robust planting of cilantro, dill, basil, and chives this coming year, and add some oregano, which we eat by the handful anyway. While we planted onions and they sprouted, they didn’t grow, so I’d love to find a place in the yard where they thrive. Now that I list it all… we really grew many of the things I wanted to grow. It feels good, actually, to know that I mostly want to boost production, not change it.
What other veggies or fruits would you recommend adding? I need fresh produce to daydream about as the days get short and cold and I spend most of my time indoors.
Recipe in a Bottle 
Chilliest for the winter comfort casseroles. Beetroot and more beetroot for just about anything and cucumbers! Great post. Describes my winter exactly. Happy dreaming.
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I had really good luck with kale this year, I’ve been harvesting it since late June and it still is thriving after our first freeze. I generally don’t do regular onions, but I always put in some bunching onions.
Oregano is a perennial and spreads a lot. You might have it popping up in random places throughout your yard in a year or two! So, when you mow it will smell like spaghetti sauce!
If you want to save space, winter squashes like spaghetti squash that vine do rather well on a trellis or arbor.
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Yes I’m with Kimberly kale is the backbone of our production and our ‘walking onions’ similar to bunching are there all year round. We love spaghetti squash but our friend has more sucess than us so we swap produce with her instead.
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I am thankful all the time that my husband loves to plan and plant the garden where I don’t mind the upkeep, harvest, and cooking all the goodness, and then back to him for canning all my fun concoctions. He’s already hard at work on what needs to be done for next years garden. Since we live in northern Iowa he starts everything on our sunporch and then in spring we transplant them. We are trying to be more thoughtful as to when we want certain things to come up but the one thing I am looking forward to is actually landscaping with all the wonderful things we can eat. They usually have awesome color and texture so we are going to do a lot of planting “out of the garden” as well.
We are adding kale and turnips to the garden next year. Also we’re thinking about trying to train all the wild raspberries we have on our land. My goal would be to plant a few fruit trees as well. If we could grow our own pears and persimmons I would be over the moon!
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aargh! We don’t have green fingers and the plants we care for usually wilt!
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Thanks for the follow 🙂
I’ve just moved out and your recipes are perfect for a house warming that I have yet to plan
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” daydreaming about the garden next year may be a substantial part of how I get through the winter”
Yep!!
Don´t forget, though, that a garden changes naturally every year, some seasons are better for certain crops and varieties than others. A bit more sunshine in March, late frosts, a rainy June can make a big difference. I usually plant a well-proven variety plus a new one for testing, if I need to be sure to get a harvest. I also test new spots with a few plants, watch how they are doing for one summer, then dig a new bed next winter if things went well.
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How much space to you need for your potatoes? We eat a lot of potatoes and would love to grow our own. Small space though. Everything has to be potted.
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If you want something unusual but tasty, I recommend kohlrabi. Depending on climate, okra is fun, too.
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I loosely follow square foot gardening for planning. Last year, some of our best harvests were sugar snap peas and snap beans (green beans) in purple, green, and yellow! In about 10 square feet, we harvested almost 10 lbs of sugar snap last spring and almost 8lbs of bush sized green beans from 7 square feet! And if you have space indoors and a sunny windowsill, you can jumpstart an early spring garden with plants you seed now 😀. Good luck!
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Lovely post. Lettuce, potatoes, onions, banana peppers and squash (spaghetti which took up too much space) did well this year in our garden in PA, but we’d like more tomatoes, green peppers, and corn which didn’t do as well. I’ll probably spend the winter months researching soil and rotation to improve output next year.
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