VIDALIA — It may be mid-January, but gardeners shouldn’t let the date on the calendar discourage them from getting an early start to their spring ornamental garden.

Now is the time to start some plants from seeds indoors, and January is a good time to put in some winter annuals like pansies and snapdragons if the ground is dry enough, Natchez gardener Karen Dardick said.

Other plants, like camellias and roses, are on sale now and can be planted later.

But just as important as starting growing some plants is planning what other plants will go in the garden when the conditions are right for planting them.

“The worst way to do a garden is impulse shopping,” Dardick said.

For experienced growers, that means evaluating what they already have.

“The first thing I would do is look at my existing garden and see what worked last year and what didn’t work, and replace plants that were poor performers,” Dardick said.

The next step for the experienced and the novice gardener is to ask how much time they can devote to gardening this year, and then try to dedicate an appropriate amount of space to it accordingly.

“For starters, start with a small space and get that pretty,” Dardick said, “You wouldn’t want a garden that is too big for you to handle.”

Gardeners-to-be don’t just have to sit around planning, though, and they can start to prepare the ground for spring by mulching, a process Dardick said they should have already been doing.

In many parts of the Miss-Lou, however, going beyond mulching and starting to turn up the soil probably won’t do a lot of good right now.

“When the ground is this wet, you really don’t dig it,” she said. “What they can do is put something on top, just a small layer of mulch. When the ground gets a little drier they can turn that into the ground.”

The reason gardeners should wait to turn the mulch over is because, even with the occasional balmy days the region experiences during the dead of winter, the ground temperature is too low.

“The ground is so wet and cold that it is not going to absorb nutrients,” Dardick said.