Hillside Greenhouse

Annual Gardening Calendar

Planning ahead is half the battle. As we go through the year, I'll try to update this page with upcoming garden tasks and when they should, or could, be performed.

Nothing much to do other than plan for the coming year. Look through the catalogs and read web sites. If you would like a little winter-time browsing, Thompson and Morgan has a nice site with a lot of fun information.

Check stored bulbs to make sure they are not too dry and don't have any mold starting to grow.

Get catalog orders in soon.

Check stored bulbs.

If you germinate your own seeds, near the end of the month you could start many garden plants to be set out later. You will need a warm area with plenty of humidity and light to get the best growth.

Check stored bulbs.

Near the end of the month, you can plant cold tolerant things like spinich, radishes, peas, and potatoes.

Time to plant. Make sure you are prepared to cover or carry in plants through the end of the month. Even a light sheet will protect plants from late frosts near the end of the month. Don't cover with plastic sheeting. It doesn't hold heat well enough. Some very frost sensitive plants that could be damaged even with a cover may be best planted after the 15th of the month. Some of these are tuberous begonia, dahlia, browallia, and portulaca.

Watch the weather forcasts and you can get a pretty good idea of when or if you will need to cover things. Weather.com has a pretty good ten day forcast.

Keep the weeds down. If you used a product like Preen, you'll be way ahead and the task will be easier. The trick to controlling weeds is to not let them get out of hand in the first place. Two minutes a day saves many minutes later on.

Keep up with the weeds.

You may begin to harvest tomatoes by early this month if you got a good start in the spring.

Should be plenty to harvest in the garden by now.

The first frost doesn't come for a month yet (we hope). Keep harvesting the vegetables.

We should get our first frost this month. Ususally if you cover your flowering plants you can keep them looking good until halloween.

Wait until the soil is close to or even slighty frozen, then cover perennials with some type of mulch. This is important in years when we don't get much snow. It is especially important if you have plants rated to zone 5. In theory, zone 4 plants will survive without mulch, but it wouldn't hurt to give them a little cover as insurance.

You want to wait for the ground to freeze just a bit, or at least near freezing, so that you don't trap a lot of warm soil under the mulch. This may take until well into November and even early December in our climate. If the plants are too warm while they are covered, they can mildew and rot. A little freezing weather won't hurt anything; the reaon you add the mulch is to keep the plants from being exposed to the really cold mid winter temperatures. Under about 4 inches of mulch, the soil temperature will not drop below zero.

You can use straw for your mulch, but leaves held down with some type of cover material works well. On a windy day, even straw will need some kind of anchor to keep it in place -- maybe burlap sacks pinned down at the corners with a big spike or a rock. Better yet, and less visible, is chicken wire laid on the ground and pinned along the edges. Sometimes people will put leaves into the leaf bags and them lay the bags on the plants. This probably works best if the bags aren't completely full so they can flatten out on the bottom and not roll around as easily.

Of course you can always leave the plants uncovered and hope for snow. With a little luck and a good choice of plants, this works most winters.

Cover Perennials -- see above

Look through garden catalogs.

Clean and repair tools.

Have a Happy Christmas