SHELBY COUNTY, Mo. — The weather has been great for doing the work you need to be doing in your garden, flowerbeds and yard. It looks like we are getting some much needed cooler weather too.
On Aug. 8 I planted the last raised beds of vegetables for 2025. Hopefully the radishes, onions, carrots and turnips will be ready before the first major killing frost. It made me sad in away knowing that it will be almost six months before I start to plant seeds in late February in raised beds at the St. Mary Community Garden for 2026.
As your vegetables start to end producing for 2025, there are somethings you need to be doing. First make a map of how your garden looks in 2025. This is very important going into 2026. Remember if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This will help you make sure to rotate your vegetables next year. This is important for several reasons. Rotating helps prevents diseases building up in the soil. This also helps fight insects from coming back the following year. I also rotate vegetables when using raised beds too.
Making notes during the 2025 growing season while working at the St. Mary Community Garden will be helpful going into the 2026 growing season. Knowing we need to make the space between all the cattle panels 6 ft. wide. We need to make the rows between the pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupes and squash 15 ft. apart. This will keep them in rows and not get into each other like they did this year. Also you can fight weeds easier. Harvesting will be easier too.
This year we had places where there were volunteer watermelons and tomatoes coming up. Next year we will move them into rows with other watermelons and tomatoes.
The biggest thing we need to do is to get started sooner planting in the raised beds and in the garden. This way we can get a good start in 2026.
As you finish harvesting vegetables, remove any disease and insect damaged vegetables. Destroying them by burning them will kill off any diseases, insects and the eggs they laid on the vegetable leaves and stems. The rest of the vegetable plants that are healthy and just dying off can be put into a compost pile. You can leave them on the garden to be tilled into the soil too.
Now is the good time to be by asking family and friends what they liked and didn’t like in your 2025 garden. How much did you sell or give away? This helps you know how much more or less of certain vegetables you need to plan on planting for 2026.
Once you have an idea of what you will be planting and how much of each vegetable crop you will plant, you can start to see how much of each type of seed you will need. Also you can make a list of what transplants you will need for 2026.
Next you want to get out any seed you have left over from the 2025 planting season. Seeing how much of each seed you have left. Some seed like greenbeans, sweet corn, peas, radishes and turnips get last several years. Carrots, onions, lettuce and potatoes don’t last much more than a year. As long as you store them in a cool dry place you can keep using them again the following year.
Once you have an idea what you will be planting, you can decide how much seed you will need to buy. Then you can start to fill in your garden plan for 2026 where you will be planting all your vegetables.
Also, you can be making a list of tools, equipment and supplies you will need to get to help make your garden better in 2026.
Create a chart to help in planning your garden for the next year
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