Planning Your Spring Garden

Spring time has long been the traditional time to begin planting for they year. Unfortunately since it is the traditional time to begin planting, most people wait until the arrival of spring weather to actually do some planning for the new garden. The thing is, it is never too late or early to begin planning your spring garden. In fact, it could be said to begin the process of planning your next garden as soon as you have finished planning your last one. This way, you can modify your plans as you go and you will have a better idea of what will work and what wont.

To help out with your planning needs, here are a few guidelines. Carefully consider these factors as you make your plans. Remember, these are guidelines only. Despite what many people would like to think, there are really very few hard and fast rules when it comes to gardening. In the end, you will need to do what is best for your particular garden yourself, and you are the only one who will be able to make that decision.

• Location. One of the biggest considerations that anyone planning a garden needs to take into consideration is that of location. Location of a garden, as with most things in life, can often mean the difference between success and failure. Ideally when you are choosing the location of your garden you need choose a location that will not only offer plenty of sunshine, but also offer some protection from the elements if at all possible.
• Size. How big of a garden are you looking to plant? Do you want a simple flower bed, or are you looking at planting a garden big enough to feed and support your family? The size of your garden will affect not only where you are going to plant it, but how much work you will be doing outside. Make sure that you can handle the garden that you will be planting effectively, and not have it be too large.
• Type. There are all kinds of gardens that you can plant, and not all of them are handled exactly the same. Decide on whether you want a flower, vegetable, eating, or some other type of garden. Once you have made that decision, a lot of your other planning decisions (such as location, size and growing season) will also have additional information to help you with finalizing your plans.
• Growing season. Once you know the type of garden that you will be planning and planting, you can begin doing some other research. This research is simply learning about the growing season of the various plants that you will be having in your garden. With this information in hand you will be able to plan out when each plant will need to be planted, and where it should be planted in your design.
• Ease of maintenance. Ideally, when you begin planning your spring garden you should be aiming for a design that is as simple and easy to maintain as possible. Typically, the easier that a garden is to maintain, then the more likely it will be to succeed. Some additions to the garden could help make it a little easier to maintain. For instance, to increase the effectiveness of your watering or irrigation, you could lay some drip irrigation hoses at ground level to ensure maximized watering effectiveness.