Nicole Johnsey Burke walks through ten steps to prepare your garden now for spring: make a planting calendar, order seeds for herbs and greens, start seeds indoors about 60 days before your last frost date, and stock up on compost and structures like trellises. She gives specific timing for each crop and offers a free calendar on Gardenary.
Questions this video answers
About 60 days before the last frost date.
Around 60 days before the last frost date.
Around 45–50 days before the last frost date.
2 to 3 inches of compost.
Perennial herbs (rosemary, oregano, sage, thyme, marjoram, lemon balm) and large greens/brassicas (kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts).
Chapters
Here are 10 things that you can do right now to be sure you have your best spring garden ever. Hello there. My name is Nicole Burke, and I'm the owner of Gardenary. We're on a mission to make gardening ordinary. And today I want to be sure your spring garden is extraordinary. So here are the things I do to make my spring garden shine and sparkle and be the best yet. My spring garden last year was wheels off. It was my favorite spring garden ever. So I'm going to tell you what I did last winter to be ready for spring so that you can do it, too. So the first thing is to fill out a garden calendar. So to get a system to get dates in mind so you know what needs to be done every month, every day, every week before you get to spring. So I would love to help you out with that. We have a Gardenary calendar that's for free. You only have to put in your two dates, your first and last frost date the. Then we do the rest. We tell you every other planting date that you need to know so we can get you on your way. You can do your calendar on your own if you want to, but I'd love to give you that calendar for free. So it's gardenary.com calendar and you can download it, make it your own, make a copy, put in your dates, and boom, you have a calendar. So do it with me. Do it by yourself. Do it. You want a calendar because things that go on the calendar, they get done. And if you're anything like me, things that aren't on the calendar, they get forgotten. So make yourself a planting calendar right now to get ready for the spring season. The second thing that you can do right now is to start to make some planting plans. I love doing planting plans for my beds so that I can kind of start to see in my mind's eye all the different things I'm going to try to fit into my beds each and every season. So. So it doesn't have to be perfect when you first get started. One of my favorite mentors, he says you don't have to get it perfect. You just got to get it going. And so that's what a plan does. It doesn't mean you have to keep it doesn't mean you have to do it just what you wrote down. But it gets your wheels turned and it gets your mind starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together as to what will go where in your garden. So start to make some planting plans. I'll put a resource down below about My planting plans, and you can see some sneak peeks of those. So planting plans are one of my favorite things to do. And you're going to love just sitting down, having a cup of tea, and making out some planting plans. It will pay you back so well in the months to come when you're like, oh, what am I putting there? Oh, I have a plan for it. Let me check it out. All right. The third thing you can do to make your spring garden shine and sparkle is to plan your most specific dates. So getting the particular dates for your spring garden is critical. We talked about marking out your whole calendar, but knowing particular days, like your last frost date, and then you can work back from there. I love to know my pea planting day, that's like a significant day for me is when my peas go into the garden. And generally for me, that's going to be at least right at the 60 day mark. So 60 days before my last frost, that's when my peas go into the garden. So they have plenty of time to get done, to grow to their fullest extent, to turn into loads of peas in the garden before the weather starts to warm up and turn to the warm season. So pea planting day is a big one for me. And then the day that I move all of my big plants from inside, outside into the garden, generally that's going to be around 60 days before the last frost date as well. And then the days when I start to plant out seeds into the garden for radishes and carrots and lettuces, those are big days for me. And generally that's going to be probably somewhere around 50, 45 days before my last frost date. So those are some of the keys first to get started, to make sure your spring garden is amazing. The next thing you want to do is order seeds. So if you haven't done this yet, it is time to order seeds for your spring garden. You want to order the seeds that need to be started right now, as fast as possible if you haven't done so already. That's going to be your perennial herbs. So rosemary, oregano, sage, thyme, any other ones you want to do, like marjoram or lemon balm, order those seeds right now. And then also order seeds for your large greens, kale, Swiss chard, brassicas, like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, order seeds for those as well. So those need to get to your doorstep right now because it's time to start those. And I'll tell you about that in the next point. But right now, order Those seeds. And then the next set of seeds you need to order will be for your small plants. So the small root crops for the spring garden, like radishes, beets and carrots, and then your greens like arugula, butter crunch, Spring mix any of the greens that you're going to grow directly into the garden. Spinach is another one. You want to order those seeds. You're not going to plant them right now, but you want to have them ready to go so that as soon as you hit that first day for the spring garden, you're ready to plant out. All right. The next thing you want to do for your spring garden to shine and sparkle is to start some seeds indoors. So you've ordered those seeds. You want to start your herb plants right away if you haven't done this already. You want to start oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme. I'm behind on this as well. I start those, put them under lights, put them on a warming mat so you can make the most of the time, speed them up a little bit and get those ready so they're ready to go out into the spring garden. And then next you want to start. The next thing you want to do is start your large greens. So kale, Swiss, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, mustards, all those can be started indoors right now so that they will be ready to move out to the garden. Out as you get into 60, 75 days before your last frost. The next thing you want to do, if you haven't ordered seeds already, is get seeds for flowers. So things like calendula, and I just forgot the name of the flower, calendula, the stuff you make for tea, chamomile and any other cool season flowers like snapdragons, pansies, maybe a little bit, depending on where you are, maybe a little bit late to start those from seed and but try for the fast growing seeds to start those indoors as well. So you can order seeds and get those started or start to look for local sources where you can get those from a local nursery flowers, especially the pansies and snapdragons, they're wonderful way to support your local nursery and get those flowers from them. So start looking for your resources and search for those, how you're going to get those flowers when it comes time to plant. All right, the next thing you want to do is order any structures right now that you're going to need for your garden. So are you adding in some raised beds, adding in some new trellises? What kind of trellis system are you going to use for your peas, your fava beans, or your those pretty pea flowers. What do you want to do for anything that's going to be climbing? So think about those trellis systems and right now is a wonderful time to order trellises for your garden. My dog Totoro wants to come up and join us. So trellises are an important thing to order right now. The other structure you want to order is any raised beds. If you're wanting to add some new, some new beds if you want to add some new edging. So if there's new native plant spaces you want to add or flower beds, then right now is a great time to get edging or to get some walkway material. Anything that you want to do to beautify your garden, to make it bigger, to expand, expand it to add new planting space. Right now is the time to be thinking about these things, not when spring arrives. So we have so many clients who will contact us or be ready to garden. And it's the middle of April and everything's sold out or delayed for like two weeks or four weeks. Right now, if you order, all these things will be ready for you so that you're ready to garden as soon as the temps warm up. So order those structures. The next thing you want to order is some frost cloth and some hoops or structures for the cloth itself. So you can use a wide variety of things to cover your garden when you start to plant it out for the cool season. The simplest thing is just to use a nice little light cloth that's going to a fleece that's going to break up the cold air from your cool season plants. If you're in a really cold place, you can go with a thicker frost cloth. Colder than that, you can use a plastic, and colder than that, you could use a cold frame or a greenhouse. Either way, think about some system you want to use to protect your tender cool season plants. So things like your lettuces, radishes, maybe some of your Swiss chard plants that aren't going to weather sudden dips in temperature as you're going through the spring season. Right now is a fantastic time to order those frost cloths so you're ready to protect all those plants that you've worked so hard to get growing in the garden. Next step, we're almost done. Is to find out where you're going to get compost for your garden for the spring season. I highly recommend adding 2 to 3 inches of compost right on top of your raised bed right before you plant for the spring season. So now's the time you want to start sourcing that. Find out reliable places, make sure they've got nice, natural, organic compost, and then it's going to be finished. Not too hot to put into your garden when it's time to plant. And if you can go ahead and purchase that compost, even better, you can have that waiting for ready for you as soon as your beds are ready for it. All right, so now you are prepped and ready for the most fantastic spring season in the garden that you have ever had. By making plans and ordering and getting everything set up right now, you are so far ahead of the game, you're going to be ready the minute the temperatures warm up and your soil is ready for plants. I've got one bonus thing you can do to really make your spring garden shine, and, and that is to test out winter sowing. So, winter sowing is simply planting seeds directly into the soil right now, way before you think it's time for those plants to grow. So winter sowing is a practice that people have done in all kinds of ways. A lot of people use milk jugs and put them out in the snow, let them just sit there, and, you know, get cold through the winter, and then they start to sprout on their own as soon as the temps warm. Well, you can actually practice this by planting directly into your beds. So winter sowing is a wonderful way to get a jump start on the spring season and also to just work with nature, because this is the way seeds come up in nature, right? They're out there in the wild throughout the coldest part of the year, and then as soon as the soil warms up, your sprouts germinate, come to life, and boom, you didn't have to do anything. So test out that 10th way to make your spring garden spread shine, which is by trying out some winter sowing. I'm doing this in my own garden this year, so stay tuned and I'll show you the results. I've already winter sown spinach and carrots and beets and radishes and arugula. So I can't wait to see the results of that and see what you get in your own garden as well. All right, so if you want to learn how to grow more with me through the spring, summer, all year long, you've got to check out our upcoming gardenary workshop. I'm going to be teaching you how to use the gardenary way to make gardening more fun, more easy, and more beautiful and delicious. So the workshop is happening soon. You can find the link to sign up for it right below this video. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for being part of Gardenary and I hope this video means that your spring garden is going to be more beautiful than it ever has been before. Tell me in the comments your favorite tip and the one thing you're definitely going to do this spring to make it awesome. I'll see you soon.
