Whether you’re a first time gardener or a regular, achieving your seasonal gardening goals can be a challenge. Doing what you can to think ahead and prepare for the growing season will serve you well in the end. We have a few suggestions that you’ll want to think about as you start this season.
Summer Vision
What will make you feel proud of yourself at the end of this season? Maybe it’s creating a new flower bed or starting a vegetable garden. Perhaps it’s concentrating on revamping your front yard this summer and saving your backyard for next summer. Write out the accomplishments you want to achieve by the end of this season and make sure you focus on those things throughout the coming months. Sometimes we try to tackle everything but find out that instead of doing a few things well we stretched ourselves thin and weren’t able to put our best into every endeavor.
Time
Summer months are especially busy and can crowd out the time we spend in our gardens. Keep in mind that bigger projects require more time. If your time forecast for this summer looks too busy to start a raised bed garden, perhaps you can start a container garden. Maybe you don’t have time to revamp all of your landscaped areas but perhaps you can work on one or two beds. Assessing how much time you can dedicate to working in your garden will help you determine what goals you’re able to achieve.
Start Small
If this is your first venture into gardening and landscaping, try not to bite off more than you can chew. Keep in mind that you’ll be learning lessons along the way and you’ll want to apply those lessons in the upcoming seasons. Putting in the effort to learn how to create and maintain one flower bed will be worth the patience when you see that you didn’t make the same mistakes in multiple beds throughout your landscape. The more you garden, the better you will grow as a gardener. Your gardening taste and interests may change from one season to the next – get to know yourself as a gardener and create your masterpiece over time.
Standby Caretakers
For those of us with vacation plans, make sure to have someone you trust on standby to water your plants whether they’re inside or outside. Like pets, our plants can’t always come along with us but they still need to be taken good care of. While a neighbor may be a convenient option, make sure they are reliable. Also remember to offer the same favor in return.
Checklist
Creating a gardening checklist will help you stay on track for where you want to land at the end of the season. Choose a format that works best for you, whether it’s a daily or weekly checklist. Include maintenance tasks like weeding, watering, fertilizing and trimming. Also think about new actions you will need to take throughout the season like planting and transplanting.
Record Your Results
Your roadmap is just the beginning of your garden planning. Remember to record your lessons along the way for an even better road ahead. You may think you’ll remember when you planted your plants and when they began to produce or bloom, but by next year, those details will probably be long gone from your memory. Recording them as you go will help you adjust for better results each year.
Creating a roadmap for your masterpiece this season will help keep you focused on your target. Visit our projects to get ideas for your masterpiece.
