Winter may technically be upon us, but the sunlight is gaining day by day, so I can’t help but feel that anticipation for the upcoming gardening season here in Alberta’s Zone 3. Even though the short growing window and chilly conditions call for meticulous planning, this early part of the year is the perfect opportunity to make a solid plan for a successful 2025 garden. I start by reflecting on my previous season’s successes and challenges/failures. From there, it’s just a matter of making decisions, drawing up garden plans, and buying seed.
In many ways, 2024’s garden was very much, a success—especially since it’s almost January and I’m still enjoying homegrown potatoes. Not everything thrived—some crops struggled more than I expected—but what did go right taught me so much that the wins easily outnumber the losses. Such as, learning how resilient potatoes can be: a frost of -1°C on June 19, nearly three weeks past our supposed last frost date, wilted their tops but didn’t stop them from bouncing back and delivering an abundant harvest.
2024 Strawberries
I also discovered the importance of planting strawberries closer together (or sneaking more in between any that survive the winter) and using bird netting—because the birds were clearly feasting on all the fruit I thought wasn’t there. Cabbage turned out to be bug-prone and definitely needs better protection next time, and I realize now I need to plant far more of it, as well as additional carrots and onions. Broccoli and cauliflower were simply too finicky in my conditions and didn’t grow well, and the bugs adored them more than I did, so I’m putting those aside for now. The asparagus I bought never even came up, which was disappointing.
Meanwhile, I didn’t plant any green beans, but after turning a neighbor’s into canned dilly beans, I’ll be adding a lot of them this year. I also learned that I could have left the tomatoes and carrots in the ground longer; they could have grown much better and riper if I’d been more patient and less worried about early frosts. Celery was worth planting—though it grew skinny since I wasn’t aware it needed extra steps to form those thick stalks. My pumpkins and squash did okay once I restarted them after that frost, but the watermelon never really took off. Still, I’m pleased with what I learned and look forward to an even better season next year.
The biggest game changer this year was incorporating peat moss from our own property—unearthed while building a road to the back field—along with goat manure to improve the soil. Though it remains quite clumpy from just so much clay, it’s healthy, drains well, and seems like a solid foundation to build on in the coming years. Every season teaches me something new, and with each lesson, I’m closer to creating the most fruitful garden possible.
For 2025, I’ll be including the potatoes – moved to the other side of the garden to prevent diseases – as well as onions, carrots, cabbage, celery, and strawberries that we did well with in 2024, and adding green beans, radishes, watermelon, zucchini, and I think corn. Like I mentioned above, I’m going to skip the broccoli and cauliflower, but I’ll also leave out other squashes aside from zucchini.
Then there’s also the greenhouse – which I’ll once again use for tomatoes and cucumbers and hopefully bell peppers (which never grew passed a few inches high this year). I’ll be planting much less tomatoes and a lot more cucumbers and hope for better luck with them than we, and many others, had this year.
In a future post or two, I’ll be sharing my layouts and seed purchases as well as photos, of course. I’ll need to start celery and onion seed very soon! I’m planning on turning a backroom into a bit of a grow room with some grow lights and shelves wrapped in plastic for a more proper set up than I had in 2024 with my seed trays crammed in among my houseplants!
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