Action Plan: Looking Ahead to Your Next Garden
A new growing season offers you the opportunity to start fresh and build upon your hard-won gardening experience to grow even better than before! Thanks to last season’s successes and –ahem– failures, you should be at least a little wiser and more prepared to correct your past mistakes, repeat your wins, and maybe learn a few new tricks.
To make sure your next gardening experience is a rewarding one, it can help to look ahead at what you hope to accomplish and what it might take to get you there.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when preparing for this season’s garden:
What Are Your Goals?
The best way to start planning your next garden is to think about what you want to get out of it. Are you just starting out? Are you hoping to produce bigger yields? Are you interested in learning new skills or trying your hand at a nifty new technique? Most of your decisions in the upcoming season will depend on your answers to these questions, so it’s a good idea to think ahead about your gardening hopes and dreams. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
What Have You Learned?
What do you know now that you didn’t know last year? Did you learn some valuable lessons from your past mistakes? Did you discover any cool new gardening hacks? Did you read a real page-turner on the art of cultivation? This newfound knowledge can help you make better decisions this season and, hopefully, achieve better results. Fingers crossed.
What Do You Want to Keep The Same?
Whatever went right last year is obviously worth repeating. Did certain varieties perform exceptionally well? Did you use a specific nutrient that boosted the growth of your plants? Were you pleasantly surprised by the yields of a particular crop? Take note of what worked well last year and make plans to replicate it. They don’t call it a “do-over” for nothing.
What Do You Want to Do Differently?
It goes without saying that you should avoid past mistakes. Did you neglect any gardening duties like weeding or fertilizing? (We won’t tell.) Did any products fail to live up to your expectations? Did the results of a particular plant underwhelm you? Saying “thanks, but no thanks” to the things that didn’t work last year will probably lead to an instant upgrade of this year’s garden.
What Do You Want to Learn?
A new season of gardening can offer exciting new opportunities to educate yourself! Think about any gaps in your knowledge and prepare to nerd out! Are you interested in the art of cloning plants? Are you curious about that weird stuff called mycorrhizae? Is there a gardener you admire who might be able to teach you a few new tricks if you beg them? Make plans to seek out knowledge and empower yourself to be an even better gardener.
What Do You Need?
It’s best to get an early start on gathering all the supplies you think you’ll need this season. Do you need to stock up on seeds? Do you need a new raised bed to expand your garden or to replace one that’s seen its final days? Are there any gardening tools that will make your job easier or more fun? Creating a wishlist now can help you prioritize your purchases so you’re ready when the growing season begins. And, of course, GardenTap can help you find some of what you’re looking for. Wink!
New Morning
Every year of gardening offers new opportunities to improve, and that’s part of the satisfaction. There’s always more to learn about the art of growing, and it’s helpful to think ahead about the coming year so you can be prepared to make the most of it. We hope you benefit from the questions above and that they help you plant the seeds of a more successful garden this season. Let’s grow!
Bonus Tip: Check out our blog post on creating and using a garden journal to plan your garden, track your progress, and more!
