As the gardening season is ending, this is a great time to look at the year ahead. The 2018 Baer’s Agricultural Almanac and Gardener’ Guide is an ideal way to start.

John Baer’s Sons has been publishing the almanac since 1825. Unlike many other almanacs, it contains no ads. This is edited by Linda L. Weidman.

From cover to cover this makes good reading, and is packed with useful information for gardeners. I highly recommend a five year subscription. Single copies are also available and would also make good stocking stuffers and last minute gifts for the upcoming holiday season. Baer’s almanac is beautifully illustrated with historical sketches.

The vegetable planting and seed planting tables are invaluable. For those gardeners who never seem to catch up, there is also a procrastinator’s table with the last dates for planting each kind of vegetable seed. A section is also devoted to the weather predictions for the year.

Readers can also learn about gardening by the moon. This also has a guide to the position of the sun, moon, and planets throughout the year.

Throughout the almanac are enlightening articles on various gardening topics and a whole section on folklore and garden lore as well as lots of articles on our nation’s history. As if that wasn’t enough, the almanac offers scrumptious recipes.

Calendars are invaluable to gardeners. Some of the good gardening calendars even have gardening tips. The beautifully illustrated gardening calendars also provide inspiration. I prefer the weekly engagement calendars because they have plenty of space for listing appointments, notes, and the like.

I find that the wall calendars simply lack the space needed for notes, etc. However, the ones with the large pocket or pouch running along the bottom of the calendar are convenient to use since there is space to store bills, notes and the like for each month. Some of these types of calendars are illustrated with gardening themes.

Two of the garden-themed weekly 2018 engagement calendars/planners are the Marjolein Bastin 2018 monthly/weekly calendar and the Country Gardens 2018 Weekly Calendar. Both have appealing garden-related illustrations.

This season is also a good time to review how the gardening season went and what you might want to change for the 2018 gardening season. If you are planning on buying seeds and plants by mail for next year, it is important to be on the mailing lists so you will receive the new catalogs as soon as they come out.