How to Keep Your Garden Thriving All Year Round

On a recent walk through the LEAF Urban Farm, I was greeted by a kaleidoscope of colors: lush greens, vivid reds, vibrant purples, bright oranges, and cheery yellows. Bees buzzed across the landscape, doing their part to help pollinate the plants. Spring, however, isn’t the only time when the farm yields a bountiful harvest. Even as the seasons change, you’ll find an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, and flora here.

What Are the Secrets to Maintaining a Thriving Garden All Year Round?

For Alan, one of LEAF’s core volunteers, it’s more about planning around temperature rather than the seasons themselves. “It really comes down to the temperatures being cool or warm because that’s what really matters to the plants,” he said. “It’s also about finding out what plants thrive in your area for a particular season.”

Nurturing a year-round garden takes research, observation, and planning. Research helps you understand the types of plants that work best under different soil temperatures, sunlight amounts, and weather conditions. Observing what thrives in your neighborhood adds to that understanding. And with the data you’ve gathered, you can better plan out what you’ll plant when. Read on for a deeper look into how seasonality affects planting and what you can do to encourage a lush garden throughout the year. 

What Are Seasons and Why Are They Important?

For gardeners, seasons are planting periods, defined more by climate than months on a calendar. As noted by The Village Gardener, plants respond to soil temperature, daylight hours, and humidity. While how the air feels can impact plants, what’s even more important is the soil temperature. Some plants thrive when the days are longer and temperatures are warmer, while others are perfectly fine under cooler temperatures and with more darkness. To optimize yields, it’s essential to understand these environmental factors as you decide what to put into the ground. 

Missed planting cycles are missed opportunities. If certain plants go into the ground too late in a season, the weather and soil might be too cold or too warm for them to thrive. For example, as Alan explained, if you plant summer vegetables late in the season and they start to flourish in September or October, then they may be exposed to cooler nights, when problems such as insects or powdery mildew crop up. All of this impacts the yield. Meanwhile, cool-weather plants could be ready to take their spots before they’ve been harvested. Paying close attention to temperature changes, particularly in the soil, allows you to plan for a proper crop rotation. Rotating crops in a given space is an important aspect of the regenerative agriculture principles that LEAF follows to naturally build soil health and preserve soil biodiversity.

What Are the Best Types of Plants to Grow During Each Season?

As spring moves into summer at LEAF Urban Farm, you can find plenty of squashes, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, all of which benefit from warmer soil. Colorful flowers–think nasturtiums, alyssum, marigolds, and sunflowers–are also prevalent. But once the season transitions into fall and winter, you’ll find the so-called “winter plants,” such as brassicas (from the cabbage and mustard family), leafy greens, and onions. 

“But there's a lot of overlap,” Alan noted, “and that's one of the things we have to look out for. Oftentimes, you want to get your winter vegetables planted by August and September, and your winter flowers started from seed in August and September for an October or November planting.”

This is where chatting with other gardeners in your neighborhood, as well as observing which types of plants are doing well each month, is helpful in planning your own garden. There are also plenty of planting guides that you can consult. A good reference for local seasonal information are the UC Master Gardener websites, which provide research from the University of California (see UC Master Gardener websites for Alameda County, Santa Clara County and Contra Costa County - bearing in mind that while most of us live in Alameda County, our weather patterns are more closely related to Santa Clara and Contra Costa Counties.)

What Are Some Useful Planting Techniques for Transitional Periods?

Weather transitions can be tricky for plants. The good news is, there are techniques you can deploy to protect plants from the elements while you get them started and while they are growing. 

Shadehouses and a small greenhouse protect more vulnerable plants at the LEAF Urban Farm. Outside of these structures, the farm’s volunteer gardeners use row covers over some plants for sun, cold, and insect protection. They can also make use of shadier areas when needed. In keeping with regenerative agriculture principles, the gardeners mulch and plant cover crops to protect and enrich the soil, preparing it for different seasons. During our walk-through, Alan pointed out sweet peas that were planted over the winter. Before long, the sweet peas will transition out to make room for whole beans that thrive in warmer weather. 

Raised garden beds are ideal for seasonal planting. Since they are raised and contain decomposing material, they’ll be warmer in the spring while staying drier during rainy periods, Alan noted.

Some plants benefit from strategic pruning, which coaxes them into blooming continuously. Alan pointed out some lemon balm, an herb in the mint family, noting, “It grows year-round: winter, spring, summer, fall. It just has to be cut back down once a year, and it will come right back.”

Knowing the temperature patterns of your area really goes a long way. With the Bay Area’s microclimates, plants that thrive in Fremont, for example, may not do as well in the Tri-Valley or on the Peninsula. That’s why observing what is flourishing in your neighbor’s garden at particular times is so important.  

“In the springtime, when we’re thinking about planting our squash, tomatoes, and peppers, we see the beautiful days we often have in February and March,” Alan noted. “But the nights turn to the mid-40s. Suddenly, our beautiful days turn into very cold nights and things that we thought would thrive don’t. If we had just waited another four to six weeks, we might have avoided that problem. It’s really important to select the correct plants for that particular season.”

Beautiful Blooms from Season to Season

Bottom line, there’s always something growing at the LEAF Urban Farm. That’s great for the local food banks that receive the garden’s produce, as well as the students who come to this living classroom to learn about soil science and regenerative agriculture. As LEAF gardeners have shown, maintaining a blossoming garden throughout the year simply takes research, observation, and planning. By paying close attention to what types of plants thrive when, you’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor from season to season.

Want to learn more about regenerative agriculture or try it out for yourself? Sign up for one of our events or volunteer at the LEAF Urban Farm.