I love planning… my goals, menus, daily activities, projects, and so much more. But my favorite thing to plan each year is my garden.

I do this long before the first crocus or daffodil pokes its head out of the ground. Winter is the perfect time to think about your garden for the upcoming gardening season. How about you? Do you enjoy planning your garden for the year?

Planning involves many aspects of your garden. What flowers and vegetables will you grow? When should you plant them? Do you grow from seeds or from garden center transplants? There’s a lot to think about. To learn more about how to plan your garden for the year, you’ll find a lot of helpful information on this post: 4 Simple Steps to Plan Your Best Garden.

When planning your garden, there are some mistakes that you’ll want to avoid. While these mistakes won’t ruin your garden for the year, avoiding these mistakes can make your season more enjoyable. Here are six mistakes to avoid when planning your garden.

6 Mistakes to Avoid When Planning Your Garden…

Mistake #1: Not Considering Your Schedule for the Year

Before you decide what to plant in your garden this year, first look at your calendar. Have you scheduled family vacations or activities? Will you be out of town during the growing season? Do you have a major life event coming up this year?

Consider these questions as you think about what projects you want to accomplish or what you want to grow this year. Here’s why. You want to make sure that your planned activities won’t interfere with anything important in the garden. For example, if you have a summer vacation during harvest time, you could end up losing a lot of the produce. And the plants might stop producing because of this.

Maybe you’ll be gone during the spring when you need to get your plants in the ground. I had this problem last year when I needed to be gone for 3 weeks to help my mother through surgery. I was leaving right as my early spring flowers and veggies needed to go into the ground.

Or maybe this summer you have a wedding or big family event when you won’t be available to keep your flower pots watered.

While all these activities can affect your garden, if you consider them while you plan, you can make better decisions. For me, because I knew I would be gone in early spring, I chose not to start a lot of my produce from seed and instead purchased transplants once I got home.

When going on vacation, stagger your planting so the produce is not all ripening while you’re gone. Also, invite family and friends to pick your harvest while you’re on vacation.

You could plant more drought-tolerant flowers in your containers so they can miss a day or two of water if you’ll be unavailable. Plus, you could hire a neighborhood teenager to water your pots during your big family event.

The key is knowing what activities you’ve scheduled for the year to make better choices when planning your garden.

Mistake #2: Planting Only Perennials in Your Flower Beds

When it comes to flowers, perennials are the mainstay of our gardens. They come back year-after-year providing consistent blooms. But most perennial plants bloom only for a short period, typically a few weeks. This can leave your flower beds looking sparse as you wait for the next perennial to bloom.

One way to combat this is to fill in your flower beds with annuals that can bloom all summer long. Tuck these long-blooming plants in between the perennials, and you’ll have more beauty in your flower beds all summer long.

At the back of your beds, you could plant taller annuals such as dahlias, sunflowers, or cosmos. In the middle of the beds, plant zinnias, campanula, or ammi. And in front of the beds you could add geraniums, marigolds, or lantana.

Also, consider adding summer-blooming bulbs to fill in your flower beds. In the spring, alliums can add beautiful globes of color. Lilies and gladiolas add height to your flower beds. And shorter varieties of plants, such as begonias, can help fill in the front of the beds.

Mistake #3: Planning Too Many Time-Consuming Projects

At the beginning of the year, when it seems we have so much time, it’s easy to go overboard in thinking we can do it all. We plan way too many projects that need to be done in the warmer weather, but we forget how busy this season is. Not only do we have our gardens to maintain and harvesting of produce, we have vacations, outings, barbecues, summer parties and other commitments.

To help you plan more effectively, pull out your calendar again and look at when you have some open time in your schedule. Then, consider what projects you would like to accomplish this year that could fit in those time slots. Be realistic about how long the project will take and add some additional days just to be safe.

I use the following technique when planning my projects. Choose just one large project for the summer. Then add a few more medium and smaller projects. Keep a list of these medium-sized or smaller projects. Then, when you have a free weekend, you might select a medium-sized project. When you have an afternoon free, you could select a small project.

At the end of the growing season, it’s better to have completed one major project and a few smaller tasks than to have started 3 or 4 big projects and not completed any.

Mistake #4: Thinking You Must Purchase All the Things for Your Garden

We’ve all done it. You run down to the garden center to purchase a few plants, and you come home with dozens. You’re browsing a garden magazine and see all the beautiful new chair cushions and place an order for a new set when the ones you have are still in good shape.

You listen to one YouTuber and think you need this or that new product, such as the latest fertilizer, so you purchase it. Another influencer recommends a different fertilizer, so you decide you need to try that product as well. Before you know it, you have an entire shelf of products and you don’t know what to use.

We’re encouraged to buy this new tool or that new gadget for our garden. Or we want to grow all the new flowers, shrubs or perennials that are being promoted each year. It’s overwhelming.

You truly don’t need to spend a lot of money each year to grow your garden. There are definitely things you’ll need to purchase, but you don’t need them all. Take some time and think about what you already have on hand that you can use before you run out and buy new.

Here are a few ideas to consider…

• Instead of buying new pots, look around your home and garage for unusual containers for your flowers. They don’t all have to match.
• Take inventory of the fertilizer products you already have before you buy more.
• Assess your outdoor furniture and see if you can restore it. For example, paint your furniture to help it look like new again.
• Before you purchase a bunch of new plants, consider where you would put them. Do you even have room for something new?
• If you’re tired of your cushions, make covers from fabric you already have.
• Use leftover Christmas light strands instead of purchasing expensive ones with Edison bulbs.

Mistake #5: Planning for Everything to go Into the Garden at the Same Time

This is an easy mistake to make. In the spring, we’re so excited to get planting. So, everything goes into the garden at the same time. This means that everything will bloom and ripen at the same time. Then you end up with tons of produce to harvest and process all at once.

Your favorite flowers will all bloom at the same time, which is great for making a few weeks of bouquets. But then things taper off, and you’ll have fewer flowers to pick from.

Instead, plan to stagger your plantings of produce and flowers so you’ll have a smaller but continuous supply of everything. This way, you won’t be overwhelmed with piles of tomatoes or buckets of zinnias.

Mistake #6: Not Planning at All

For many gardeners, the extent of their planning is to purchase a bunch of new seeds. While purchasing new seeds for the year is exciting, that is not really planning. Where will you put those seeds? When will you start them? Does your family really enjoy tomatoes enough to plant 10 different varieties?

In order to plan your garden for the year, you need to consider what you and your family will enjoy. While eggplant looks beautiful, if your family doesn’t like it, you shouldn’t grow it. And will you have time to harvest all the flowers you grow, or will you be spending too much time dead-heading those flowers? Will your family eat the produce and herbs you’re growing?

Planning your garden for the year is such a wonderful thing to do. When it’s blustery and cold outside, it’s so much fun to peruse the seed catalogues, read through your favorite garden books and imagine what the garden will look like this year. But you need to be realistic about what you can do. How much time do you have to spend? How much money is available to purchase supplies? And how much time can you devote to your garden?

As you plan, keep these six mistakes in mind. We want to avoid adding to our work this year by choosing what’s best for us and our individual situations. So take the time now to plan your garden for the year. Your future self will thank you.