For those who don’t know this about me – I love a good plan. So, January often finds me knee deep in graph paper and colored pencils plotting out the garden beds for the coming spring. Occasionally muttering to myself and cross-referencing my seed spreadsheet and days to harvest timelines.

There’s a good reason for the madness. Here in Lucille’s Garden we do a lot of crop rotation, meaning I try not to plant the same crop in a bed two years in a row, and succession planting, meaning I plan my beds so that they have a spring, summer and fall crop. Also companion planting, which means mapping out your beds to include a mix of crop plants, herbs and flowers for pest reduction and pollination.

All of that takes planning, and if I do it properly in January, I don’t have to spend much time studying spreadsheets in the growing season. Which is definitely my preferred state when the weather is nice and there is work to be done in the garden.

That doesn’t mean everything goes to plan each year. In the words of Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley.” But I do find that a bit of planning and preparation in the winter means a smoother spring, summer and fall – even when things have gone somewhat agley.

So, here is an overview of how I sit down to so my garden planning with some concrete tips and trips. As well as a few helpful tools I’ve learned to keep in my toolbox to set your season up for success.

STEP ONE: The Dream

I start my garden planning with a seed list. I think you could make an argument for doing things in the reverse order, sitting down and mapping out your beds before you decide what you want to buy. But, I roughly grow the same crops every year, just different varieties. So I sit down with my seed catalogues first and decide what I want to grow before I put pen to paper to map. This is probably a bit like eating dessert before the meal, but hey: looking at the plants helps me determine the direction I want to go in for the season, so I feel it’s justified.

Once I have my seed list, I make a spreadsheet. Not glamourous, I know, but I usually grow somewhere between 100 and 150 different varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers a year so this helps me keep them all straight.

Now, I grew up watching the original Star Trek with my father, and my favorite character was lieutenant commander Spock, so I’m a fan of science and data. Once I have all my crops listed, I add columns for information that I want to be able to quickly reference as I plan my seed starting and crop rotation. For me, that usually includes whether the plant is frost hardy (if it can survive a frost), germination temperature (the soil temperature at which the seeds can germinate), days to germination (how long until seedlings emerge), days to harvest (how many days from germination until the crop will yield), the start date, planting bed, and any important seed starting notes.

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Once I’ve got that set up, I sit down with my plans!

STEP TWO: The Planning

This is the part that really takes time. I’ve got 13 planting beds, and I create a design for each one for spring, summer and fall. So that means I’m creating 39 plans in total.

So let’s go through my plans for Bed E season by season so we can see how it all fits together.

SPRING

Take a look at the plan for Spring of 2025 in Bed E. Remember where I noted in my spreadsheet whether a crop was frost hardy or not? This helps us know if we’re dealing with a cool season crop, which grow best in spring or fall.

For spring in Bed E, I’ll be growing chives, pea ‘Tom Thumb,’ broccoli rabe, cilantro, celery, collards, mizuna, kohlrabi and mustard, and garbanzo beans ‘Kabouli Black.’ The celery could technically grow all season long, and if it looks good, I might leave it through the summer. The rest of the crops are true cool-season fans and will come out of the garden sometime in mid-June.

The garbanzo beans are a little unique here because most beans like the heat. However, this heirloom garbanzo can be planted in the garden two weeks before the last frost and takes about 100 days to yield a harvest. So I’ll plant at the beginning of April and expect a harvest mid-July.

Now, I know because of last year’s plans that I grew broccoli in Bed E in the fall. That makes me a bit nervous because broccoli is a brassica and if there’s one thing every garden pest loves it’s a good brassica. The trouble is, many cool season crops are brassicas because they have what it takes to stand up to the frost. So to protect my broccoli rabe, collards, and kohlrabi, I’m going to use three tools that I like to keep in my toolbox.

1) Companion planting is when you plant two or more things together so that they can help each other out. That’s where the cilantro comes in. Cilantro is so fragrant it helps disguise favorite crops from pests that might like to take a nibble.

2) Trap Cropping. This is a good one. A trap crop is something you plant specifically to attract pests. In this case, mustard and mizuna make great trap crops. They are brassica and the same pests love them and they are quick to grow, unlike the longer-season broccoli. So I’ll put those in first so that any potential pests will flock to them over other later crops.

But wait, I know what you’re thinking. Mustard and mizuna are delicious! These quicker leafy greens are often able to recover better from pest damage. But I still have another tool in my toolbox that I use on all my brassica.

3) Mechanical removal. Because I manage Lucille’s Garden organically, I don’t spray anything on my crops although there are many chemicals that would eliminate common garden pests. So that means I mechanically remove them, which looks like me carefully inspecting each plant and picking off the offending bugs and dropping them in soapy water. The good thing about cool-season crops is that these pests are slow in the morning and if you can get out before the sun warms them up you can catch enough to make a difference.

So those are my plans and strategies for Spring in Bed E. So let’s move on to Summer so we can get a sense of how succession planting works.

SUMMER

Here we can see that things have changed a little. All the cool-season crops have come out, except the chives along the back border and possibly the celery. Melons will follow the collards and mizuna, which I’ll pull at the beginning of June. Broccoli rabe is a relatively fast crops (about 50 days to harvest) so that will be followed by tomatoes which like to go in the ground in mid-May. Ground cherries and zinnia ‘Peruviana’ will replace the kohlrabi and mustard in the bottom portion of the bed. Mustard is quick to harvest so I’ll pull that in May and replace with the ground cherries, which have a similar timeline to tomatoes. The zinnia can be direct seeded when the last of the kohlrabi come out in June.

Remember those garbanzo beans from before? I expect them to yield a crop in mid-July. When I harvest them, I’ll pull the plants and replace with bean ‘Blue Lake Bush.’ I’ll put other beans in earlier, so this planting will really yield a second run of this prolific bean in mid-September when the other beans are winding down.

All of the above timing and coordination is called crop succession, meaning that I plan my gardens so that when something comes out something else goes in. Here are a three good tools to make sure you using crop succession effectively.

1) Have a good list of crops that pair well together. I know from experience that growing peas, followed by beans works well for spring and summer … but never leaves you enough time for a third planting in the fall. That’s fine if you aren’t attached to a fall crop, but I am. So I’m going for a rotation of sugar snap peas – cucumbers – sugar snap peas. These crops all like a good trellis and cucumbers are quick enough that it leaves a time for a spring and fall planting of sugar snap peas.

2) Quick crops are your friend. It’s nice to have a good bank of quick crops in your back pocket for when you want to rotate a bed but need something fast. This is especially useful in the spring if you want the bed to open in April or in the fall when you pull a crop in October but want another harvest before a hard frost. Radish ‘Saxa’ is perfect for this because it yields a radish in an astonishing 18 days.

3) Crops that pull double duty. I also love a good crop that yields more than one thing. Sweet potatoes are an excellent example. I plant my sweet potato slips in early May and they will remain in the garden until we harvest in October. That would be a long time to devote to one crop. Except, magically, sweet potatoes can feed you all year long. The beautiful green foliage is edible and can be harvested all through the growing season and used just like spinach. Then you can dig your sweet potatoes in September or October and cure them for a month, at which point they’ll keep all winter!

Now that we’ve made it through summer we’ll take a quick look at fall.

FALL

You can see in this plan that some things have changed, while others have remained the same. The tomatoes are still in the back of the bed because depending on the weather they can yield until October. More broccoli and mustard have taken the place of the melons, this time with a border of marigolds from the summer to repel pests. The ground cherries and zinnia are still in the front of the bottom part of the bed, and radishes and beets have replaced the butternut squash at the back.

I like fall because the pressure is lower. As crops wind down and come out, you can replace with a second run of your favorite cool-season varieties. Things like mustard, lettuce and radishes are great for this because they tend to yield quickly. Cilantro is a wonderful herb to repeat in the fall as well because it’s so lovely and fresh and fragrant and really brightens up the late fall garden. Just take a look at the days to harvest before you seed to make sure you have enough time before predicted first frost to enjoy your veggies.

This is anecdotal, but I have found it to be true – I think cool-season crops are slower in the fall than in the spring. Often when I’m planning my fall planting, I’ll mentally add a week or two to the days to harvest for each crop. The days are getting shorter and cooler, rather than longer and warmer. So everyone, plants and gardener together, tend to slow down as the days go by. So allowing an extra week often means you’ll get a better harvest when the cool weather sets in.

I plan a very large garden here, and my goal is to have something growing in it from March until November, weather permitting. That means very careful planning and timing on my part. But the more I plan ahead the smoother my season goes. And any of these tips and tricks would help at home, no matter what level of planning you want to invest in your veggie garden.

I feel very lucky here in Lucille’s to be able to grow so many vibrant and beautiful crops, flowers and herbs. I’m so grateful for the support of the Sun East Foundation and to all of my co-workers here at Tyler who put up with me while I work these plans through.

Stop by and visit next time you’re at Tyler. I’d love to show off these plans in person … plus any seedlings I’ve got sprouted! So far my artichoke and cardoon are thriving and I’m excited to jump into the real rush of seed starting in February and March.

Happy Gardening!