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Beginners Gardening Guide #13: Preparing for a Great Spring Start


Even if it’s terribly cold where you live in the middle of winter, spring is sure to come, just as it always has. Gardening is a year-round hobby, and the actions you take in winter are essential to having a robust, radiant, productive and healthy garden throughout the rest of the year. While your garden sleeps, spend some time planning, dreaming and preparing, then spring into action when the thaw hits.

Start by perusing your favorite catalogs and garden-related websites, looking for those plants you want to add to the mix when the longed-for break in the winter weather arrives. In the northern hemisphere, catalogs begin arriving in the mail in mid to late January. About this time, online catalogs are displaying theirs, as well. Enjoyable hours with hot chocolate or tea in hand are spent combing or clicking the colorful pages, envisioning how different species of new friends would look and grow alongside the old friends you already have. Place your order in time to have your plants, bulbs, and seeds in hand by early March.

Late winter is a very good time to plant new bulbs, berry bushes, roses, and most deciduous plants. If you took bulbs out to winter indoors, return them to the soil now so they can begin to awaken and grow. If you are planning to move plants around in the garden, do it as soon as the ground is thawed. Once plants begin to grow in the spring they are best left alone, lest their delicate new roots be broken. Planting trees and bushes bought from the nursery is different. They will do well when planted in late winter or very early spring.

Pruning does the most good for shrubs, ornamentals, and trees during this period. Cutting them back will incite new growth that will take advantage of the compost you added to the garden last fall and the abundant moisture typically present in the ground during this season. Never prune just for the sake of pruning. Only do so if branches look over grown, or the overall plant is beginning to lose its shape. Prune plants in a way consistent with their natural shapes, to bring about the healthiest new growth.

If you are planning a vegetable garden, this is also the time to be picking out what new and traditional favorites you want to enjoy on the table in the months ahead. Use pencil and paper to map the design of your rows, placing them one to two feet apart for smaller vegetables like carrots, beets, or asparagus. Beans need 2 feet widths, while tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, and larger lettuces require three feet. Get your seeds ordered, and if you like to grow your tomatoes and peppers from seeds rather than plants you purchase at the nursery, get them started indoors now, in small containers. If you wait until spring and then plant seeds for these vegetables, you’ll certainly lose a month of tasty enjoyment, and may even face a race against the frost to get any produce at all, depending on your growing zone.

In late winter, when you are just starting to notice the days getting longer, start planning for spring, so you’ll get a running start once you can get out and get to work on your beloved garden. A great beginning will set the stage for your best year of gardening yet!

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