Last month while I was interviewing Dr. Allan Armitage, the widely respected horticulturist, he said something that really stuck with me: Gardening is never boring.
Shortly after college, I worked in the business world in Atlanta, Georgia, wearing a suit and tie. It wasn’t where my heart was, but I found myself in this group of movers and shakers — young executives who were really ambitious and doing very well in their careers at a very early age. I wasn’t shy about sharing the fact that I was also a gardener, and many of those professionals would come up to me and say, “You are so lucky to know what your passion is and to have an interest that you’re excited about every day.”
Whether it’s the height of the growing season or the quiet of winter, life is never boring if you’re a gardener. There is always something to learn and something to do.
It has never dawned on me before that point that there are some people out there that don’t have a passion — the thing they look forward to every day. That realization helped me appreciate the many ways that gardening is exciting and fulfilling.
Allan is right on the money. When you’re a gardener, you always have something to look forward to. Any time of the year, you have opportunities for learning, planting or harvesting, and there is always something coming on the horizon. In this week’s podcast, I dive into the many reasons why gardening is never boring and chronicle a typical year for me.
Be Proactive, Not Reactive
If you are walking on the train tracks and you see a train off in the distance, you may not move right away because it looks like you have plenty of time before the train reaches you. But the fact is, the train is moving faster than you realize. The next thing you know, the train will be barreling down on you, and you better get out of the way or get run over. This is how I think about the wintertime for gardeners.
I was watching “Gardeners’ World” recently when one of the gardeners said, “The thing about winter is it’s the one time of year you can catch up with nature.” How true.
Winter is the opportunity gardeners have to hone their skills and educate themselves, becoming a better, smarter, more confident gardener. For instance, I love taking classes — both in-person and online. I recently enjoyed a winter tree ID class at The State Botanical Garden of Georgia and a seed cleaning class with the Georgia Native Plant Society.
Subscribe to local newsletters and check out the local cooperative extension service for your area to find in-person, hands-on classes you can join. Symposiums and garden shows such as the Philadelphia Flower Show and the Northwest Flower and Garden Show offer even more opportunities to learn from experts in various horticultural pursuits and find inspiration.
And don’t forget books. You can’t beat a good gardening book. And these days you can get the audiobook versions so you can enjoy a book while in the car or handling chores. Though I really enjoy the pictures and diagrams that go with a physical book or ebook.
Gardening and conservation books are educational and inspiring.
Seed Germination
Seed starting is one of my favorite gardening activities and something I look forward to every year. Already this year I have germinated pepper seeds — which need more lead time before transplanting than many other vegetable seeds require.
If you seek to have more perennial flowers and plants in your garden this year, winter sowing is one of the best things you can do. It doesn’t take special skills, just patience. You can try the milk jug method or just sow in pots left outdoors with protection from hungry animals.
Native flower seeds often need a period of cold weather exposure combined with moisture before they will be triggered to sprout. It takes two months or more experiencing the cycles of nature before the seeds will germinate.
Winter sowing native seeds is practically a “set it and forget it” method of propagating native plants.
Winter Pruning
Between January and late March is when I do all of my heavy pruning — when plants and trees are dormant. That’s really the time you want to do heavy pruning, when the leaves are off and you can see what you’re doing. You can reshape your plants or cut them back and rejuvenate them. And you can stay very busy depending on the size of your landscape or property or your garden.
Sometimes people feel intimidated by winter pruning. If you feel that way, I suggest checking out a book on winter pruning or an online class that will build your confidence.
I don’t do any heavy pruning after the wintertime unless it’s dead, diseased or crossing branches. And you can do that anytime for the health of the plants you’re trying to save. But for the rejuvenation or the reshaping or the reinvigoration, now, or soon, is the time to do that.
I like to wait until late February or mid-March, right before the growing season kicks in. I don’t want those cuts to be exposed for too long before the new growth comes on.
I don’t do any heavy pruning after the wintertime unless it’s dead, diseased or crossing branches. And you can do that anytime for the health of the plants you’re trying to save.
Remove Non-Natives
While plants are dormant, it’s easier to see where non-native vines and other non-native plants are coming out of the ground. I go out at this time of year with my mattock, chop into the vine and sever it or dig out the roots.
Preferably, you’re getting the whole root out if you can. If you can’t trace the whole vine back to its origin, there is an argument to be made for using an herbicide. Make a cut just above the surface and dip the part of the vine that’s closest to the roots into herbicide.
Peruse Seed Catalogs
It’s time to order seeds for spring, summer and fall planting. But seed catalogs offer more than just products to buy — they are educational. Find seed starting tips in the same place where you order seeds.
Seed companies start sending out catalogs with eye-catching photographs and professionally written descriptions around the holiday season. It’s the perfect time to rest from the festivities and start planning next season’s garden.
Prep Your Beds
In March, whether or not you are a vegetable gardener or not, this is a great time before everything is waking up for you to get out into your beds. They can be raised beds or in-ground beds, edibles or flowers. Prepare them for the growing season by top dressing with compost, scuffling out all the weeds that you can see, and getting some mulch down.
Just ahead of my spring planting, I top dress with one to two inches of compost. Sometimes I’ll work it into the soil. But the reason why this is such a good time to do that is you have a blank slate when things are still dormant. You can liberally drop down a nice layer of compost and leave it there and let it do its thing. It will work its way down. The microbes, earthworms, arthropods and everything in the soil food web will bring it down and incorporate it into your existing soil.
If you practice season extension and succession planting, you can begin a cool-season garden in March with some broccoli, kale and cabbage transplants.
Top dress garden beds with compost ahead of planting time.
Buy Seedlings
Around April or May, local seedling growers will hold their sales. I grow a lot of seedlings with my daughter — thousands — to sell to local gardeners.
Find seedlings directly from local growers or visit a farmers market. You can also check out native plant society plant sales.
These are just some of the 3,350 plants my daughter Amy and I started from seed in 2021 for our annual spring seedling sale. These tomato seedlings were enjoying a brief amount of sunshine.
Propagate Plants from Cuttings
Starting in May and continuing through the summer months, you can take cuttings to propagate.
There are different times of year that you can take cuttings, depending on the plant. Some respond better later in the year when it’s semi-hardwood or hardwood cuttings. But there are some plants where you can take softwood cuttings, when they’re, as the name implies, soft wood. They haven’t really started getting woody yet, but they respond well and root out quickly at that time of year.
I love propagation. It’s a very fun activity. You take that cutting, pot it and set it aside, and in a matter of weeks to a month or two, you’re going to have roots growing and that plant is going to show new growth. And then you’re going to pot it up or transplant it outside.
You can listen to my conversation with Brie Arthur about plant propagation to learn more.
Herb cuttings can be propagated by rooting. These propagations can be overwintered indoors and planted out come spring. Free plants!
(photo: Amy Prentice)
Plant a Fall Garden
The fall is a great time to grow food because the heat is not as stressful for you and your plants, and many plant diseases and pests have abated or moved on. But you can’t wait until September to start sowing seeds for a fall garden.
You should be sowing seeds in July for transplanting in late August or early September. It may seem counterintuitive to plant a fall garden in August, but there are several reasons why that’s the time to start. The plants will tolerate the heat in August during their early weeks. Then by the time they are reaching a harvestable size, the weather will have cooled and concerns about heat intolerance and bolting will have passed.
If you start late, the day length will shorten significantly before the crops have had the chance to mature. Once the day length is shorter than 10 hours, vegetable plants won’t be productive anymore.
Fall is my favorite gardening season. Working out in the garden is easier in the cool weather, there is less pest and disease pressure on plants, and the crops make fantastic additions to dinner plates.
Order Bulbs
In August, you can begin to order bulbs for fall planting. You can experience a succession of blooms by searching for varieties that bloom during different periods: late winter, early spring, late spring and summer.
Don’t forget to order garlic bulbs as well. If you wait until planting time in November, the bulbs you want will be sold out.
And when November comes, you’ll be ready to plant the bulbs, with no anxiety about the bulbs you wanted being sold out or hard to come by.
I have planted a naturalized bulb lawn, and planted even more bulbs this past November. Bulbs lawns, planted once, keep coming back year after year, and get better each year.
You can experience a succession of blooms by planting flowering bulb varieties that bloom during different periods: late winter, early spring, late spring and summer.
Experiment
I don’t have opportunities to experiment with growing mediums in winter because if I find out that a medium is a failure, I won’t have time to restart the thousands of seedlings I need to grow. But in August, when my seed starting is less intensive, I can afford a few failures in the name of science.
I generally use Pro-Mix BX, which is a peat-based product, the industry standard. But I have reservations about using peat moss because of sustainability concerns. There are alternatives, such as PittMoss, a paper-based product, and August is a good time for me to perfect my craft of seed starting with PittMoss.
Your experiment may be very different from mine. But the important thing is to take that opportunity to try something new.
Spread Mulch
Arborist’s wood chips are one of my favorite mulches, and I get them for free. I use ChipDrop to sign up to receive a delivery of a truckload of wood chips from a tree company that will gladly drop the wood chips at my property rather than paying a tipping fee at a landfill or municipal composting yard.
I spread wood chip mulch in October so they will be in place before the leaves fall. Between the wood chips and the leaves, my beds are well covered with organic materials that will suppress weeds while they slowly decompose, improving the soil.
Keeping leaves in your property rather than sending them off to a landfill is a gift to wildlife, providing food and shelter to insects that in turn become baby bird food.
When a neighbor’s tree was being cut down, I asked the tree service employees if I could have the wood chips. Since they wouldn’t have to take time to haul the load to a landfill before their next job, they were happy to oblige. As a result, I scored these free arborist wood chips to replenish the mulch in my landscape beds.
Take Care of Your Tools
We need to work with the best tools that we can afford because quality matters with gardening. You don’t want the cheap stuff because you’ll be replacing it so quickly. Just invest upfront and take care of your tools.
December is a great time to take some steel wool to the blades and sharpen them. If your tools have wood handles, take some linseed oil and rub it onto the wood and let that absorb in, and then wipe it down.
You always want sharp blades, so sharpen them in winter when the tools are not being frequently used, but also during their busy season. Clean cuts mean fewer opportunities for diseases to ravage your plants.
You can check out my video on How to Remove Rust from Garden Tools for more tips.
Keeps tools sharp and sanitized to ensure clean cuts.
Update Your Seed Ordering List
I keep a spreadsheet of my seed inventory and the seeds that I intend to order. When I browse seed catalogs, I don’t go too overboard because I know what I need and what I have already.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the gardening cure for bordem. If you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
Have you found gardening to be the cure for boredom? Let us know what you learned in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 011: Plant Propagation Basics – With Brie Arthur
Episode 022: The Year-round Vegetable Gardener with Niki Jabbour
Episode 122: Fall Vegetable Garden Success: Best Plants and Tips for Cool-Season Growing
Episode 130: Winter Sowing: A Simple Way To Successfully Start Seeds Outdoors
Episode 200: Monty Don: Behind the Scenes of Gardeners’ World, and More
Episode 238: Peat Moss: Examining the Challenges of Its Ongoing Use in the Face of Climate Change
Episode 250: Mastering the Art of Succession Planting, with Meg Cowden
Episode 235: The Easiest Way to Start and Grow Native Seeds in Winter: No Special Equipment Required
Episode 275: Cool-Season Vegetables to Grow in Fall-Updated Encore Presentation
Episode 286: Naturalizing Bulb Lawns
Episode 403: Winter Tree Care, with Basil Camu
Episode 440: Fall Reading List: Nature, Garden & Ecology Books for Cozy Evenings
Episode 447: The Common Sense Gardener, with Allan Armitage
joegardener Blog: The Best Soil Temperature for Seed Germination
joegardener Blog: What to Grow in a Fall Vegetable Garden
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Add Spring Flowering Bulbs to Your Landscape in the Fall
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Remove Rust from Garden Tools
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Territorial Seed Company – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I receive a commission every time you purchase a product through an Amazon affiliate link. Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Cool Springs Press / Quarto Group and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
