10 Things to Do in Winter to Plan Your Best 2026 Garden

1. Actually Look at What Worked Last Year

Okay, time to get real with yourself about last season.

Grab a notebook—like an actual notebook, not just a mental note you'll forget—and write down what happened. Those tomatoes that went crazy and gave you more than you knew what to do with? Write down what kind they were and exactly where you stuck 'em in the ground.

That spot where literally everything died? Yeah, we gotta talk about that too.

Stuff to actually write down:

• Which plants absolutely killed it and which ones just... didn't
• Where the bugs showed up (they always show up somewhere)
• Which spots got baked by the sun or never saw light
• Whatever you grew way too much of (I'm looking at you, zucchini)
• What you ran out of and wished you had more of

This isn't about feeling bad about the plants you murdered. We all do it. The whole point is to not make the exact same mistakes again.

2. Get Your Soil Tested (Yeah, Really)

I know, I know. Soil testing sounds boring and like something only super serious gardeners do.

But here's the truth—most of the time when your garden sucks, it's the soil. Not the bugs. Not bad luck. Not because you have a black thumb. The soil.

Winter's perfect for this because you're not using the beds anyway. Hit up your local extension office or grab a test kit online. Costs like twenty bucks and you'll actually know your pH, what nutrients you're missing, all that stuff you've been guessing about.

And while you're thinking about soil, this is when you should start building up the good microbes. If you mix Ancient Soil into your beds now, those billions of tiny organisms get to work all winter. By spring? Your soil's actually alive and ready to grow stuff.

Living soil versus dead dirt—it's a completely different game.

3. Actually Map Out Where Everything Goes

Get some graph paper. Or honestly, just open a Google Doc and make a table. Whatever works.

Sketch out where your beds are, where everything's gonna go. And here's the thing—don't plant your tomatoes in the same spot you had them last year. That's literally asking for disease to show up and ruin everything.

Some combos that actually work:

• Tomatoes next to basil (and yeah, they taste amazing together—not a coincidence)
• Carrots and onions are basically best friends
• Throw some flowers in there near your veggies so the bees actually show up
• Give squash and melons their space—they'll take over if you let 'em

Here's something smart people do that I wish I'd known earlier: don't plant all your lettuce on the same day. Plant some every couple weeks. That way you've got fresh salad leaves all summer instead of like fifty heads of lettuce that all go to seed at once and you can't give 'em away fast enough.

Succession planting. Sounds fancy, but it's just... not doing everything at once.

4. Order Seeds Now Before Everything Good Sells Out

This happens every single year and it drives me nuts.

February rolls around. Everyone suddenly goes "oh yeah, I should garden this year!" and orders seeds. All the good heirloom varieties? Gone. That tomato everyone raves about? Sold out until next year.

Order your seeds in January. Right now, basically. You can actually sit there with a cup of coffee, browse the catalogs, read all the descriptions without rushing.

Days to maturity actually matters—don't ignore that number.

If your area only gets 90 days without frost, that 110-day tomato isn't gonna make it. Just... it won't. I learned this the hard way.

Get a mix of:

• The stuff you know works in your yard
• Maybe one or two weird things you wanna try (that's how you find your new favorites)
• Things you can plant in waves for continuous harvest
• Some quick growers for early spring when you're itching to get outside

5. Start Your Compost Pile (Yes, In Winter)

You can totally compost when it's cold out. It goes slower, but it still breaks down.

Just start throwing your kitchen scraps in a bin outside. Coffee grounds, vegetable peels, eggshells, all that. Mix in some brown stuff—dead leaves from fall, cardboard you rip up, whatever. By spring you'll have something that actually looks like soil starting to happen.

Wanna speed this up? Worm castings are like hitting fast-forward on your compost. Mix some in and the microbes in there go to town on everything.

Seriously, those little organisms work harder than any of us.

We've got a whole guide on composting if you want the full breakdown.

6. Get Your Seed Starting Setup Ready

If you're starting seeds inside—which you totally should because it's cheaper and you get way more variety than just buying transplants—now's when you get organized.

You're gonna need:

• Grow lights (unless you've got like a crazy sunny south-facing window, which most of us don't)
• Seed starting mix or some trays
• A heat mat if you're doing tomatoes or peppers—they like it warm to germinate
• Labels because I promise you'll plant stuff and immediately forget what it was
• A little fan for air movement (keeps that damping off disease from killing everything)

Set this all up now while you're not stressed. Plug in the lights, make sure they work. You don't wanna find out your grow light's dead the morning you need to plant.

Here's something that makes a huge difference—if you use Plant Juice when you're starting seeds, those seedlings come out way stronger. There's like 291+ different beneficial microbes in there that protect the roots when they're tiny and help them actually survive when you move them outside.

Transplant shock is real, and microbes help a ton.

We've got a whole guide on starting seeds if you want more details on this.

7. Pick One Thing to Actually Learn

Winter's honestly the best time to learn stuff because you can sit inside where it's warm and read.

Pick one thing you wanna get better at this year. Maybe you wanna finally grow amazing tomatoes. Or start that cut flower garden you've been thinking about. Or figure out why your roses always look terrible.

Just pick one. Not ten. One.

Good places to learn:

• Your local extension office website—it's free and actually specific to where you live
• Library books (also free)
• YouTube channels from people who garden in your same climate zone
• Online groups where you can ask dumb questions without feeling dumb

The key is picking one thing and actually learning it well enough to use it. If you try to master everything at once, you'll just get overwhelmed and by March you won't remember any of it.

8. Take Care of Your Tools (Before You Need Them)

There's nothing worse than going to grab your pruners in April and they're rusty and can barely cut through butter.

Spend like an afternoon doing this:

• Sharpen anything with a blade—pruners, hoes, shovels, all of it
• Take some steel wool to any rust you see
• Rub some oil on the wooden handles so they don't dry out and crack
• If something's totally trashed, just replace it now
• Organize your shed or garage so you can actually find stuff when you need it

Sharp, clean tools make gardening so much easier. Plus they don't tear up your plants—a clean cut heals way faster than when you're basically ripping at branches with dull blades.

Your plants will thank you. And so will your back.

We wrote up a thing about essential garden tools if you're wondering what you actually need versus what's just nice to have.

9. Buy Your Soil Stuff Now

By April, garden centers are picked clean. All the good compost? Gone. That organic fertilizer everyone uses? Backordered.

Buy this stuff in winter:

• Compost or composted manure (the bags, not the fresh stuff)
• Whatever organic fertilizers your soil test said you need
• Mulch if you use it
• Any amendments specific to what your soil's missing

Just stick it all in the garage or shed somewhere dry. When planting time hits, you're not driving to three different stores trying to find what you need.

There's more on all this in our soil health guide if you want the deep dive.

10. Be Honest With Yourself About Space and Time

Every January I see people planning gardens that could feed half their neighborhood. Then by July they're drowning in weeds and giving up on half their beds.

Dream big, yeah. But also... be real with yourself.

A small garden you actually take care of beats a huge one you abandon every single time.

Some reality checks nobody wants to hear:

• Each tomato plant needs like 2-3 square feet of space (they get BIG)
• Weeding is gonna happen. There's no way around it. Sorry.
• In summer, plants need water pretty much every day
• Something will eat your plants. Bugs, rabbits, deer, something.
• Winter squash takes up space for literally months before you get anything

Start with what you can actually manage. Grow stuff your family will eat. I cannot stress this enough—success with a small garden feels amazing. Failing with a huge garden just makes you not wanna do it next year.

Check out our guides on container gardening (if you don't have much space) and organic vegetable gardening (if you're going the veggie route).