Designing the Garden
Winter is the perfect time of year to finalize all your garden plans. There are a number of websites and online apps to help with this, but I have always found it easiest to use excel since many of the others require payment and sometimes, they can feel a little over engineered. Essentially, I am looking to understand where I am going to place plants for crop rotation purposes, how many plants to sow, and when to sow. I like to use excel because I carry the printout with me in the garden and find it very convenient to customize it to my own way of working without too much "extra".
To begin, several years ago, I created a garden template in excel with the measurements of each bed so I could easily adjust it year over year. It's a great reference for remembering where plants were located in years past and what varieties I planted. During the summer, I print this out and take notes on it while in the garden. If there are varieties that I love or don't, I make note for the next year. Over time, I have narrowed it down based on what we actually harvest to cook and what varieties enhance my favorite recipes in the kitchen while giving me the right flavors to explore new ones as well. I typically fit most of it all on one page as that is most convenient for me, but by using excel, you can decide what is the best fit for you.
From there, I make sure to rotate the crops, never planting in the same place twice in a row. After I know where they are located, I lay out how many of each plant I can get in the assigned space. Then I decide what varieties I like and how many to grow of each. Over the years, I have experimented with so many types of tomatoes. I have now narrowed it down to my very favorite, and this will be the first year I don't experiment with others and waste precious space. Each year, I collect the seeds in the fall. My favorite varieties come in a variety of shapes, are great fresh on the plate, but also can and freeze very well for winter.
In addition to the vegetables, I use this time to lay out all the dahlias. Last year was the first year, that I paid special attention to color and height and the results were incredible. The garden in September was nothing short of spectacular and the pre-work really paid off. Over the season, I made note of the varieties I wanted to continue planting and the ones where I didn't harvest many blooms either because the color didn't call to me, the plant didn't flower as expected, or the size of plant did not work for my purposes. I also made note of where several varieties did not do well in a certain area. I suspect this was a soil issue so in the fall I made sure to get compost in that area to start amending deficits and fingers crossed, hoping to have better results this summer.
Having these plans printable and accessible while walking through the garden makes a huge difference year over year. For that reason, I highly recommend you use an application that you can tailor to your way of working. In short, thoughtfully planning your garden now, can pay off in dividends not only this growing season, but increase productivity year over year as you learn and refine what grows well and how well you use it.