Garden Planning at Elevation: Tips for Success, And My Practical Plan for 2025
Do you find yourself dreaming of next year’s garden after just a few weeks of snow?
🙋♀️
You’re not alone.
The seasonal rhythms of gardening are felt by farmers and backyard growers alike: the newness and vigor of spring, the energy and abundance of summer, the reaping of fall, and finally the rest and slowness that winter brings. While so much of the year for homesteaders is intensive, it always amuses me how soon into winter months I’m ready to start thinking about the garden again.
It’s like the trials and tribulations of the growing season—with just a little cold weather and rejuvenation—transform into new wisdom for the coming year.
The failures of food production are what make it so thrilling.
Weeds inspire new bed designs and morning routines. Dud crops beget more refined selections of crop varieties. Even vacation schedules become shaped by the rhythms of the garden.
It’s a beautiful way to live in my book, with that little voice that’s already scheming for the season ahead, eager to discover what we can do better next year, whatever better looks like.
So, what does ‘better’ look like?
The question is a natural place to start as we enter garden planning time.
Here are four tips for planning your garden according to your vision and values, with some of my personal favorites and focus areas this year.
At 7,000 feet, situated in a canyon where the longest day of the year brings 13 hours of sunlight and the shortest brings 6, where a freeze in June or September should be expected — cold hardiness, and the days required for a plant to mature, are maybe the two biggest factors in my garden planning.
Consider cold hardiness & days to grow.
Technically, our farm is in Zone 5a. It’s a good starting point when considering new plants to try growing, but there’s nothing like hands-on experimentation to figure out what works, what thrives, and what’s most enjoyable to grow.
Leaning into cold hardiness has been a fun way to extend the growing season and spend less energy fighting the elements or stressing about nature’s ebb and flow.
Last year, I grew a ton of different flowers for our wedding: cut flowers for bouquets, flowers for drying (our boutonnieres and barrettes turned out beautifully), edible flowers for syrups, salads and the ultimate crowd-pleaser, flower butter. This year, I don’t have a 120-person event on the calendar, so I’m simplifying slightly in two ways: growing more cold hardy flowers for earlier blooms, and growing edible flowers only.
While I loved anticipating all the blooms in the garden, many of them came towards the very end of the season. The cold hardy flowers brought color and pollinators to the garden earlier. Some of my favorites, which are both cold hardy and edible:
Stock, a beautiful sweet-smelling brassica
Snapdragon, colorful and so springy
Hollyhock, towering beauties
Calendula, somewhat cold hardy with great medicinal properties
Colder climates often mean shorter growing seasons, too. Days to Grow is another great starting point for finding what works.
For example, we’re right on the edge of being able to grow winter squash and, even more so, melon. Flipping through the squash in seed catalogs, I’m always looking at number of days, as 10 or 15 days can make a huge difference.
Some gems so far:
Galeux d'Eysines, a beautiful and delicious warty winter squash
Jarrahdale Pumpkin, stunning with amazing storage quality and great for soups
Blacktail Mountain, a watermelon that keeps for a bit
This year, I’m continuing my search for a butternut squash and a cantaloupe that can consistently make it in our climate.
Plan for storage & processing
Thinking ahead to what you want to do with different crops helps you focus your energy throughout the season on outcomes that align with your vision, goals and values — particularly ones that are rooted in sustaining your family year-round with the food you grow.
There are countless ways to process foods for long-term storage and good eating. But not all of them are appealing to everyone, obviously.
I for one am just not going to peel my tomatoes. In the fall, I toss ‘em into my enameled cast iron pot, cook ‘em with herbs and spices, and immersion-blender those bad girls.
Do you like tiny app pickles, or skewers? Or maybe pickled zucchini is your sandwich topping of choice (I see you!).
I’m big on experimenting with new varieties in the garden and I will always be ordering way more seeds than I need to. And, I’ve also learned to do my autumnal self a favor by having a few processing goals in mind and planting the essentials in larger quantities to be sure I can do a few super productive processing sessions and reap the rewards all winter long.
Balance multipurpose with mastery.
Since I entered the farm and garden world circa 2012, I’ve lived in quite a few different places. It always takes time to figure out what works and what’s the most fun to grow—that’s the case for diversity and experimentation in the garden
As you get to know your growing place more and more every year, you can begin to choose from that list of discoveries and balance multi-purpose plants with specialty ones.
Take my flower example: I started with a whole bunch of flower varieties, saw how they grew and felt what it was like to harvest and use them, then consolidated down to ones that checked multiple boxes. The flowers in my 2025 Garden Plan are all multipurpose, but to varying degrees. Marigolds are edible, but I don’t think they actually taste that good. They do smell amazing though, and they dry quite well.
Consider what your checkboxes are for each type of crop in your garden. Not everything you grow needs to check every box — It’s the sum of the parts that makes your whole garden align with your vision and values.
Think about succession.
Lastly, once I’ve got a good handle on my crop list, I’ll start to place them throughout the garden. For those that don’t need a whole season, I plan out the successions: the crops that will follow in their place after a mid-season harvest.
I rarely actually stick to these plans to the letter, but having successions in the plan helps me remember to order all the seeds and offer a cheat sheet when it comes time to harvest a crop mid-season. Here are my succession plans this year, with each bullet representing a different bed or block in the garden:
Garlic, then Fall Radish
Garlic, then Peas
Peas, then Storage Carrots
Carrots, then Buckwheat
Arugula, then Spinach
Spinach, then Beets
Beets, then Turnips
Turnips, then Arugula
Fava Beans, then Cilantro
Fava Beans, then Bald Head Mustard
Lettuce and Radish, then more Lettuce and Radish, then more Lettuce and Radish
Most of all, dance.
Growing food is to me, at its core, an opportunity to dance with nature, to play with place, to work with and learn from the land we inhabit. It’s a chance to engage each day in a give-and-take relationship with the land. It’s the art of observing the soil’s needs, timing planting with the rhythms of weather, and responding creatively to the challenges that arise. Whether it’s celebrating the first sprouts of the season, adjusting for a late frost, or experimenting with new crop pairings, this dance is both humbling and invigorating.
With that, here is my garden plan for 2025.
It’s not meant to be set in stone. I’ll continue tweaking and refining the plan as I put seed orders together and ultimately as we begin seeding and planting, but it’s a great guiding resource (and source of inspiration) in preparing for spring.
What’s your garden vision for the upcoming season? Share your plans, lessons, or favorite crop varieties in the comments.
TLDR;
Consider Cold Hardiness & Days to Grow: Understand your zone, experiment with crops, and prioritize plants suited to your climate and season length.
Plan for Storage & Processing: Decide how you’ll use your harvest, focus on essentials, and streamline your preservation methods.
Balance Multipurpose with Mastery: Experiment with diverse crops, then refine your choices to balance functionality with personal enjoyment.
Think About Succession Planting: Maximize garden space with mid-season crop rotations, and use plans as a flexible guide to streamline the process.
Don’t Forget to Dance: Observing, listening and adapting to nature is at the heart of gardening.
Curious about how I’m putting these tips into action? Paige’s 2025 Garden Plan here.
