2025 Garden Planning

Does planning your garden for the year ever feel overwhelming? You're not alone. I've seen students get so bogged down in planting charts and schedules that they forget gardening was ever fun or relaxing.

After garden planning with hundreds of clients, I developed a five-step system I'm about to teach you. I do this each year with my own vegetable garden to ensure I'm getting as many harvests as possible from my space. The system works no matter what kind of climate you live in—hot, cold, or anywhere in between.

If you'd like a fun resource to help you plan, check out our new 2025 Garden Planner. Otherwise, you just need something to write with (I love to use some colored markers or pencils) and some paper. I'll share charts from our planner below so you can recreate them for free during your planning.

Let's plan your garden together!

More Planning Resources

• If you have my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival, this is a great time to re-read Chapter Five: Plan.
• Download our free Garden Planning Calendar to help you figure out when to plant your favorite veggies in your climate.

Step One: Label Your Garden Seasons

Step one is so simple. First, you just need to know your first frost date and your last frost date of the year. Your frost dates are estimates based on historical data. Your first frost date tells you when frost can be expected to arrive and bring an end to your warm growing season. Your last frost date tells you when the threat of frost has passed and your next warm season begins.

To find your frost dates for 2025, turn to our good friend Google. Search "first and last frost date [your town]". Record your first and last frost dates on your piece of paper

While you're searching, type "average high and low temperature by month [your town]". For myself, I googled "average high and low temperature by month Nashville Tennessee". Choose one of the many reliable websites that offer you these numbers. Your average temps help you predict what the weather will be like in your area month by month.

Record your average temps for all 12 months on your paper. I like to use a chart like the one below (we'll fill in the last column in a minute).

Tip:

You can save this chart for later by making it a pin on Pinterest. Just click on the red icon in the middle.

Once you've recorded your average high and low temps, it's time to label your seasons: cold, cool, warm, or hot. Use the information below to help you label each season.

Note that there's a chance of frost in both the cold and cool seasons. Not everyone has a cold season, but most of us have at least a cool season between our first and last frost dates.

As soon as there's no chance of frost, you switch into your warm season. Some of us will eventually experience temps that rise enough to constitute a hot season, when there's no chance in you know where of frost.

When you have a basic understanding of every single season you're going to have in your garden, you're ready for step two.

Step Two: Prioritize the Plants You Want to Grow This Year

You know what they say: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That's why step two involves thinking way ahead, specifically about all the garden-based meals you'd love to feed your family and the plants you most enjoy growing.

Create a list of your top plant priorities. That way, you'll be sure to put those plants in your garden. Make sure your list includes your favorite herbs, leafy greens, root crops, fruiting plants, and flowers.

As you can see from the chart below, I like to group my plant priorities by season. Every plant has a season in which it germinates and grows best (cool, warm, or hot). I teach much more on this topic in my book, Kitchen Garden Revival, and I've included helpful plant lists in the 2025 Garden Planner.

Two of my top priorities in the cool season, for example, are lettuce plants and French breakfast radishes. I never let a cool season pass me by without planting several rounds of each.

Step Three: Consider Garden Inputs and Outputs

This step involves figuring out your (realistic) inputs and outputs.

Inputs

This is your time to consider the following:

• how big you'd like it to be if you're starting a garden or adding growing space
• how much time you can spend tending your garden
• how much money you can spend on your garden this year

For the cost, that's not just how much money you'd need to spend setting a garden up; it's also the cost to keep it planted and growing all year. As a general guideline, each and every square foot of gardening space costs about $35 to install and then requires about 90 seconds to tend each week.

I recommend giving yourself several spaces below each option so you can play around with how much space, time, and money a smaller versus a larger garden would be.

Outputs

Once you figure out your input, it's time to consider your output. I love to think through how many groceries I'll get to replace with the garden I'm growing. I typically expect on average one to two harvests a month from each square foot of gardening space.

Start thinking about how many salads, carrots, or bowls of cherry tomatoes you'll expect to harvest based on the different sizes of gardens you're estimating.

Considering your output really helps you make an informed decision before you spend any money on your garden for the new year. This is a great step to have a conversation with your partner.

Step Four: Make Planting Plans

This is the step it all starts coming together. Whenever I'm making planting plans, I love to sketch out a few different options on some graph paper before I decide on exactly how I'm going to plant out each bed. Note that you'll need a planting plan for each season in your garden. I plant up my garden at least three different times throughout the year.

Within each season, you should know which plants are considered small, medium, and large. So for instance, small plants in the cool season include lettuce, spinach, carrots, onions, arugula, and radishes. Medium-size plants are things like beets, Swiss chard, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme. And then large plants (which need at least one full square foot in the garden) include broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and peas.

The warm and hot seasons also have small, medium, and large plants, which is great news for us. We can fit all these plants together in one bed.

So take some time now to plan out your beds for every single season: the cool season, the warm season, the hot season, if you have one, and then the second season you get to enjoy later in the year, whether it's another warm or cool season. This is the best way to guarantee you never miss a harvest in the garden.

Step Five: Plan Key Dates for Each Season

Now that you know every plant you intend to grow in 2025 (and you're sure you'll have space for it since you've created your planting plans), it's time to make a plan for sourcing, planting, and harvesting. I like to make a chart like the one below.

First, list out all your crops for each season. Then, note the date when you'll need to buy seeds or plants, depending on the plant. If you want to grow a plant that's started from a tuber or clove, plan to get your order in as soon as possible. For plants you'll start by seed indoors, make another column to note the date you'll need to get them started in order to move them outdoors once the weather's right.

Next, add a column to note planting day. This is when you'll move plant starts from indoors or sow seeds you ordered a couple months before.

Finally, note your anticipated first harvest date. There have been so many times when I did all the work to get the plants into the garden but then missed the harvest window because I was out of town or super busy. That's why this last column is super duper important. You don't want to head out to your garden only to find your harvest spoiled.

Plan Your Year in the Garden with Me

And there you have it—five simple steps to make sure 2025 is your best year in the garden yet. Whether you use the amazing garden planning tool I created for you or just some paper and pens, what really matters is that you take a little time to plan your garden.

If you're interested in the garden planner, we have a digital version available on Etsy (you'll be able to download the PDF right away), and then we're also selling a really nice bound version that will ship to you. In addition to the pages I've shared in this post, there's also monthly planners and habit trackers, plus tons of gardening tips throughout.

Here's to an incredible year together in the garden!