Day 13 - Planting Calendars
Bloom - Week 2 of the 21-day Holistic Garden Planning Series
In today’s post I’m giving you all of the information you need to create a successful planting calendar for year-round growing. We’ll cover
a recap of seasonal growing
3 methods for creating and using a planting calendar
my personal planting calendar for 2025
Planting calendars are where the Virgos (moon & rising here) of the gardening world shine. We love Excel. I cringe every time I hear someone say they just use “chaos gardening” as their “plan”. It may work for them but if you have dreams of year-round gardening it starts here. Planting calendars created in winter during my spring and summer garden planning sessions has been the difference between growing into winter months and ending my homegrown harvests in September.
Our garden is more than a hobby here on the homestead. I’m sure you can relate. We may not be growing all the produce our family can eat in a year or have unrealistic goals like that, but we do work really hard to plan, grow and preserve as much as possible. A thoughtful planting calendar is the key.
What is a Planting Calendar?
A planting calendar is a way to organize when to start indoors or direct sow each crop that you want to grow. Creating a planting calendar is a crucial step in the garden planning process, one that I find is often overlooked. I guess most folks aren’t as energized by spreadsheets and color-coded notes as I am? It doesn’t have to be that nerdy, so if you’re one of the people who stays as far away from spreadsheets as possible, I’ve got you. Keep reading.
Include some or all of the following info, depending on how detailed you like to be:
seed company
variety
number of seeds planted
number of transplants desired
date planted (if different from planned)
projected potting up dates
projected transplant dates
succession dates