2025 Garden Planning: Expert Guide for Growing Success with BigYellowBag
Welcome to the 2025 Garden Planning Guide
We hope you and your family enjoyed the Winter months, and you’re ready to take on the 2025 gardening season. Whether you have lofty goals of expanding your gardens, or if you’re just hoping to maintain your existing gardens, we’ve got some great tips for your 2025 garden planning. We want to know what your 2025 garden goals are! Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know what you’re hoping to accomplish this growing season!
Looking for a guide to planning your garden layout? Check out our other planning article here!
Selecting The Right Plants
One of the top concerns for everyone doing garden planning is what plants should I focus on? There’s so much information on the internet about climate zones and what plants to grow in your garden, so we won’t bore you with those details. Just know that some crops will perform better depending on what region of North America you live in. We’re going to provide a few recommendations of crops that grow well throughout the North American climate zones, and are great choices for both beginner and expert gardeners alike! Of course, take your own taste into consideration when selecting both vegetables and flowers, but here are some great options for gardeners all across the continent.
2025 Garden Vegetables
- Tomatoes (cherry and determinate varieties)
- Lettuce
- Radishes
- Green beans
- Zucchini
- Kale
- Spinach
- Carrots
- Bell peppers
- Cucumbers
2025 Garden Flowers
- Marigolds
- Sunflowers
- Zinnias
- Black-eyed Susans
- Cosmos
- Nasturtiums
- Pansies
- Petunias
- Calendula
- Morning glories
Soil Preparation is Essential
One of the most crucial parts of your 2025 garden planning is ensuring your garden’s soil is healthy and ready for planting. Luckily for you, BigYellowBag has you covered for all your Black Garden Soil needs!
Getting quality black garden soil and mulch delivered to your home has never been easier than with BigYellowBag®. All you have to do is call or order online and we deliver. That’s it! No lugging, no mess and you don’t have to be home to take delivery. Join the tens of thousands of happy customers who have had top quality black garden soil & mulch delivered in the BigYellowBag® since 1994. If the BigYellowBag® Black Garden Soil is not exactly what you expected then we will pick it up and refund you 100%.
If possible, try and get an idea of how your garden soil is looking early on in the year, well ahead of the day you’re planning to plant anything. You want it to be dark in appearance, and the texture should be fairly light and fluffy even after the winter months. If your soil is compacted, light in colour, or stinky, you’re going to want to at least amend your garden with some fresh Black Garden Soil. In some cases, your gardens may require new soil entirely, especially if you’ve been experiencing poor growth in recent years, or if you’ve had any soil-borne insect or disease problems. Early Spring will often bring very wet conditions as well, which can be conducive to mould growth. If you see mould taking hold, it’s a good idea to remove the layer of mouldy soil and replace it with fresh Black Garden Soil.
Keys to Crop Rotation
An often overlooked practice in many home gardeners’ plan is crop rotation. This is more important for crops than flowers, but it can also help maintain soil health in flower beds. When you plant the same kind of plants in the same plot of land year after year, you can make your garden susceptible to pests and diseases. Most common crops can be categorized into four main groups:
- Leaf crops
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Spinach
- Legumes
- Green beans
- Peas
- Nightshades
- Tomatoes
- Bell peppers
- Root & Fruiting Crops
- Radishes
- Carrots
- Zucchini
- Cucumbers
Use these categories as a general guideline for crop rotation. Try to never have consecutive years where you have the same category being planted in any given plot. Try and remember what you planted where, and take that into consideration when selecting crops for your 2025 garden. Here’s some specific rotation strategies to keep in mind as well:
- Plant nitrogen-fixing legumes (beans & peas) in the plots that you previously grew resource intensive plants like tomatoes in
- After planting root crops in plots, plant leafy crops to ensure you’re utilizing all your soil’s nutrients effectively
- Alternate deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants to try and avoid depleting your Black Garden Soil
Consider Adding a Layer of Mulch to Your 2025 Garden
Another consideration for many home gardeners is to add a layer of quality mulch to every garden bed. Mulch is fantastic for gardens, boosting moisture retention, and insulating your plants from both the heat and the cold. If you’re worried about the heat, choose a lighter colour mulch so it doesn’t absorb as much heat, but if you’re trying to keep heat in your garden beds, lean towards the darker shades of mulch. Natural mulch will also slowly break down in your garden beds, adding nutrients to your soil as it decomposes. Your 2025 garden will thank you for taking extra care of your plants with BigYellowBag Mulch.
2025 Gardening Planning Spring Calendar
| Time of Year | Gardening Tasks |
| January | Preorder your 2025 BigYellowBag and start planning! |
| February | Further garden planning, and tool clean up. Seed selection and indoor seed starting for warmer climates. Pay close attention to germination periods for the plants you select! Try and time it so that your started seeds will be robust enough to be transplanted once conditions allow it. |
| March | Seed selection and indoor seed starting for cooler climates. Pay close attention to germination periods for the plants you select! Try and time it so that your started seeds will be robust enough to be transplanted once conditions allow it. Garden clean-up and soil preparation in warmer climates. |
| April | Garden clean-up and soil preparation in cooler climates. Once conditions are ideal, you can start planting in warmer climates. |
| May | Once conditions are ideal, start planting! May long weekend is generally accepted as the official start to the gardening season in many cooler regions of North America. |
I’m in Lockport, Niagara County, New York, on the top edge of the Niagara Escarpment. I think we are zone 6 here. Memorial Day is generally seen as the date we can be sure that we will have no more frosts. When should I start to plant seeds indoors, to plant in raised beds? I want to have tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupes, peas and green beans.
Whoever put in the houses on the street where I live, decided that the back half of my backyard was to be the low spot of at least 4 houses, 3 behind my lot, and the other on one side of my yard. The soil is also clay for the most part, so does not absorb water quickly. I looked into a French drain, called 3 different companies who put these in, and all said that would not work without a number of pumps, as my backyard is lower than my front, so pumps would be needed to move the water to the ditch in front of my house. All suggested my only real solution is to bring in a lot of fill, then add topsoil on top of that, to raise my backyard up. I don’t have the money for that, but I want to also be able to use my backyard, after a downpour, or a big snow melt. Some springs, its June before I can mow the lawn-when the gras gets tall enough in my
“swamp”, I have to take the weed whacker to “mow” it. On occasion, I’ve thrown mosquito baits into the “pond” that results in a big area of the yard. So, what perennial plants and shrubs could I plant, that would drink up all this water, but make it through dry periods?
Hey Karen! Thanks for your comment! You live in a beautiful corner of the country. If you’re aiming to get most of your plants in the ground around memorial day, here are some general timelines to get your seeds started indoors for those plants: Tomatoes: 6 – 10 weeks before last frost, Cucumbers: 3 – 4 weeks before last frost, and Cantaloupe: 3-4 weeks before the last frost. As for your peas and green beans, it’s best practice to start these seeds outside by direct planting. Sow your peas 6-8 weeks before the last frost, and sow your beans after the last frost, once temperatures are hovering around 15°C (59°F). Hope these suggestions help with planning Karen, and I’ll be sure to respond to your other comment too! All the best!
Hey Karen! I’m terribly sorry to hear about your difficulties with managing water in your backyard. That’s definitely a struggle for many properties in your area. Unfortunately, no matter what plant you select, they may not be able to consume/absorb enough standing water to make a meaningful difference, however choosing some water tolerant plants can help reduce the erosion caused by the excess water. The first perennial that comes to mind might be obvious, but many hosta varieties thrive in shady, damp conditions. If you’re aiming to go with native plants, ask your local nursery about ferns, asters and coneflowers that are native to your region! You could plant an array of these plants to try and mitigate the damage caused by the Spring flooding, but you may not see much in the way of water management results until your new garden has a chance to establish a robust root system. I hope these suggestions help a bit Karen, and I wish you the very best in combating your backyard water problems. Let me know if there’s anything else we can help you with, and check out our latest blog post for some more general tips regarding Spring garden planning! https://blog.bigyellowbag.com/awaken-2025-gardens-potential/
Haven’t found any prices here?
Hey Dawn!
My apologies for the website confusion. This is the BigYellowBag Blog; a collection of articles tailored towards dedicated gardeners. We write about garden tips, tricks, and all things BigYellowBag. To view the BigYellowBag products available in your area, please head to https://bigyellowbag.com/orders/new/ and input your postal/zip code. A comprehensive price list will populate showing you the products available in your area. 🙂
I hope this helps Dawn, and thanks a lot for your comment.
All the best and happy gardening!
I have preordered but I don’t know when it’s coming.
Will you please let me know?
Hey Rita!
You’ll receive an email notification to let you know about your delivery. If you’d like some further notice, send us an email at enewsletter@bigyellowbag.com including your postal/zip code asking about when your delivery will occur. We’ll put you in touch with your local supplier and get you those details 🙂
We’re looking forward to Spring Rita, and getting your BigYellowBag delivered!
All the best and happy gardneing!
Good Afternoon,
This is my second year growing Dahlias in my zone 7B garden in NC. I would like to use your sod in my raised beds: Will this soil be suitable for growing Dahlias from tubers? Thank you for any help you can give me.
Hey Patricia,
Thanks so much for your comment Patricia. In North Carolina, your local BigYellowBag supplier is Supersod, and their flagship soil product is called Soil3. It’s a fantastic compost that’s engineered to grow everything better, just like our Black Garden Soil. It will be ideal for growing your dahlias from tubers, but you may want to mix it in with your existing soil. For more specific recommendations, reach out to your local BigYellowBag supplier! You’ll be able to find their contact information here: https://bigyellowbag.com/all_locations
All the best and happy gardening,