How to Plan a Year-Round Garden

In the Cherokee language used by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, February is known as Kagali or the Hungry Month. It makes sense, before the introduction of the internationally sourced grocery store, February was rough. The stores you put up during harvest time are dwindling and there’s nothing sprouting yet. You may not actually starve, but the options for fresh foods are very limited. It’s a time of year when you would be hungry for something fresh and green. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even if you’re not shopping produce that came from half a world away. You just need to learn how to plan a year-round garden.

Year-Round Gardening

What is a year-round garden plan? It doesn’t mean you need to live in a part of the world that has mild enough temperatures that you can grow a garden outdoors 365 days a year. The plan needs to work for you in the place where you are. It may be a combination of indoor and outdoor gardening. You may grow significantly more produce in certain months than in others. Maybe your mid-winter garden is just a windowsill of herbs and greens. But the key is to plan ahead to maximize what time and space you have available to keep growing all year long.

Start with your available space. If you have both indoor and outdoor growing space, decide what makes sense to grow in each place. Consider your temperature ranges. Can you grow outside year-round if you build some season extending structures like cold frames or greenhouses? Or do you need to factor in growing indoors during part of the year? Next decide on your crucial year-round foods. What are you hungry for in February? Salads? Fresh herbs? Green vegetables? Fruit? Figure out what you want to focus on for your year-round garden plan. If you have limited space, you may need to start out with a few key crops and then expand your plan as you gain experience with year-round gardening.

Storage Vegetables

In addition to growing all year round, there are other ways to have home-grown food in the middle of winter. You can also choose to grow vegetable varieties that you can store for use all year round. Root vegetables, winter squash, dried corn, even certain fruits like storage apples can stay fresh for months after harvest. If stored correctly you can be eating these foods all the way until the fresh foods of springtime. Picking the right storage vegetable varieties can be a key piece in how to plan a year-round garden.

You need to consider storage locations with the right temperature and humidity for each kind of storage vegetable. Root vegetables need cool, dark, damp storage. Covering them in damp sand, or soil can keep them from drying out. Winter squash, pumpkins, and popcorn prefer warm, dry storage conditions. Think of an attic, spare bedroom, or pantry. Fruits like storage apples or pears want cool and dry, but relatively high humidity. Areas like a garage or cellar can work well. Check your storage vegetables for damage often, one bad spot can quickly spread throughout a whole batch of produce.

High Quality Preserving

A final piece of the puzzle is to preserve your produce so you can use it throughout the year. This takes a bit more planning because you have to choose varieties that preserve well. Then you need to grow them and harvest them before choosing a method of preserving them. If you have space, freezing can be an easy way to have fresh-tasting produce during hungry month. But freezer space can quickly get full and costs a lot of electricity to maintain. Dehydrating, drying, and canning are other ways to preserve produce for year-round use.

Choosing varieties that preserve well is the first step in this process. Plants that produce a harvest all at once can make batch processing your preserves easier. Or varieties that produce vegetables with a uniform size and shape to make canning or drying easier. There are also crops that have been selected by gardeners over time to keep their flavor well when preserved. You may need to grow different varieties for preserving from the ones that you like to eat fresh out of your garden. Start filling out the veggies for preserving in your year-round garden plan.

Looking for more tips on how to keep your garden goodies all the way through Hungry Month? Check out my post on How to Preserve Your Fresh Garden Produce for my best tips and advice.

Need some help getting your container garden going for winter harvests? Use my Crazy Easy Containers guide to get you started down the right path to the year-round garden of your dreams.