Winter Veg Garden: Plan now - January

July 2025. Swiss chard is behind cosmos.

Swiss Chard January 21, 2026

Our winter vegetable garden today.

What beauties all the veggies are, a delight to behold in our garden and on the dinner plate.

Start planning now for next winters vegetable garden because you will be needing to plant seeds and little seedlings in July and early August to achieve your gardens maximum food output potential.

The reason for making a plan now is that we often forget to account for the space and water usage in the garden when we begin planing in March.

The best places to plant for your winter veggie garden are the empty spaces made available after harvesting spring and early summer grown lettuces, arugula , peas, new potatoes , quick growing Asian greens and vegetables like Pak Choi, Mizuna, Tatsoi, and many of the greens in the Mustard plant family.

The empty spots left behind are perfect for planting cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, Swiss chard, kales, collards, carrots, Asian greens of all sorts, lettuces and arugula.

People often think that a winter vegetable garden is planted in the Autumn season, this is incorrect ---the sunlight hours are too short beginning in late August for little seedlings to really get going and grow big before the first frosts of late October.

Cold hardy lettuces and French Arugula and many quick growing cold hardy Asian greens , like Mizuna and Tatsoi are the exceptions to the rule, you can plant them all the way towards the end of September( from plant starts) and reap the benefits.

Now is a great time to test old seed packets for germination rates and throw away seed packets for things that didn't germinate.

It's so easy!

Use an old cardboard egg carton, fill with good potting soil, put on a platter so it doesn't ruin your indoor window sill, put three seeds of a vegetable in a section of carton, each carton can test for 12 different seed packets, label each one!

Veggies should start to germinate in a modestly warm house after 7-10 days.

If even one seed for each germinates, use the seed this spring. If nothing germinates, throw away seed.

Do this before you spend money on new seed packets.

Seed prices are up and the number of seeds per packet is down.