Garden Goals for 2024

I’ve been hatching some of these plans since early 2023, to be honest. Other parts of my goals are a response to what ended up being a challenging year physically for me. And others still are set to protect my creativity and attempt to restore myself and work toward a livelihood that is fruitful without ongoing burnout. Hope these goals help you reflect on your own journey in and out of the garden.

More Shelf-Stable Crops

My affinity for growing shelf stable foods is only increasing. We’ve barely scratched the surface of these foods, having grown cornmeal and dry beans for many years now plus all the peppers we grow and process as spices. And of course our sesame seeds and peanuts.

This year I’m adding Red Fife wheat (from Experimental Farm Network) to our garden. Dovetailing with my goals for my physical health, having more of the garden in these harest-once and process later type of crops is strategic. I am looking to pare back the amount of the garden in indeterminate plants like our summer vining heavy producers. And I hope we enjoy growing and baking with this wheat. Truth be told: we’ve done the math and for our family’s sourdough needs we would need 1/4 acre of wheat to supply us with our hundreds of pounds of flour we use annually, so this is more of a novelty than a true homestead goal.

Breadseed poppies have been at the top of my wish list for many years. I’d hoped to have them in the garden last summer but it didn’t happens. My first year growing them in 2019 yielded less than a tablespoon of poppy seeds from many plants, so I’m hoping for a better crop this year. That was a very very wet summer, so we will what we get in 2024.

Sweet potatoes are another crop that I’m excited to bring back to the garden. It takes a long time to grow, is super disease and pest resistant (huge bonus!), and once cured store well in our dry root cellar. In fact, over the holidays when I saw a massive stash of locally grown sweet potatoes at my coop, I bought a dozen of them and put them in our root cellar. I will be growing slips from one of them later this winter (I’ll show you how to do it too) instead of ordering them online. Sweet potatoes are clones just like garlic, so I know because a farmer in Wisconsin grew these that they will be a variety well suited to my garden too. If you see some local sweet potatoes at your coop, pick some up and store them in a cool, dark closet and we will grow them up together.

The Direct Seeded Garden

I am also taking my direct-seeded experiment to the next level this year. My goal is to record my efforts more thoroughly, and compare harvests. This supports my personal goals for the year, and might free up some time tending indoor seedlings. At least that’s my hope. I’ll be direct seeding more brassicas and other crops, using our cold frame, in late winter, as well as doing tomatoes, tomatillos, and I’ll stubbornly do more peppers this year too. I sort of want to try a whole growing season of only direct seeding, just to see what it will be like. I think it could be an interesting journey. And worth writing about.

Seed Starting Experiments

I am also following up my peat-free seed starting attempts with another round of trials. Coco Loco was great for most things, but also terrible for others. I had almost NO iceberg lettuce last year, and it’s because of coco loco. I tried growing it in a peat-based soil block and they germinated quickly, consistently, and did great. Although it was too little too late and we barely harvested any (the late summer 90-degree heat waves certainly didn’t help my cause)

More Flowers

Continuing with my theme of health and wellness, why not grow more flowers? With one teenager college bound, we will be figuring out how to grow the right amount of food for us. I think the garden might be bigger than we need it to be. I’m giggling just typing that. And after a week away in California to come home to a garden as expansive as ours, I am asking myself what kind of crazy did we get ourselves into. The solution is simple: smaller plantings of vegetables and more zinnia, gomphrena, and my favorite pink nasturtium!

Front Entrance Renovation

My office view is of our front entrance to our house. It’s got a very tight turnaround, an imposing black walnut, and oodles of potential. We’ve basically killed 90% of the plants that were there when we moved in. We have one lilac left, and a lot of weeds, safflower from the bird feeder and many dead plants. I am going to give this area a light remodel this year. It drives me crazy. I plan to start perennials (prairie dropseed, butterfly weed, and meadow blazing star) along with tons of extra zinnia for this space. It’s probably 500 square feet or so. For the butterfly weed and blazing star, I’ll be cold stratifying the seeds this week so I can germinate them in March. I’ll share this in my stories where I’ll go into more detail.

We need to heavily weed, pull out the cobbled together drip irrigation, rake out the wood chips and bring in compost. We have bigger hopes and plans for this space, but they are 10 or more years off and I need some kind of beauty here in the meantime.

Above All, Health First

I’m turning 50 in a few weeks. Decade birthdays invite deep reflection and often uncomfortable awareness of where we are along our path. It was a dark few weeks in fall when I sat with the self pity after acknowledging I’m not where I want to be and easily more than halfway through life’s journey. After I picked myself up, I committed to my health. There’s no shortcut for this, like buying starts instead of starting from seed. It’s all on each of our shoulders to take care of ourselves, and the world doesn’t stop competing for our time and attention, especially not our devices.

Adding to the aging, I’m confident this is also the calendar year I will officially be in menopause. Directly tied to this reality is that I am struggling with my weight; the pounds pile on easily, and I haven’t been able to shed them like I used to in my mid 40s. My knees are both on their final dances before I start to consider knee replacement surgery. Extra weight exacerbates knee pain and limits my mobility. So my number one priority this year, possibly even above the garden, is my physical well being.

I do routinely weight lift, a key to reducing age-related sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass, which thus lowers your metabolism and puts you at risk for things like osteoporosis, which runs in my family). But cardio, something I once did for 1-2 hours a day when I was in my 20s, size 4, and 30 lbs lighter, is something that I’ve long hidden in a dark corner of a closet since becoming a mother 18 years ago. I am not naturally a size 4, and maintaining that weight was a part time job, so that’s not my goal. There’s a happy medium where I feel healthier than I do today.

It wasn’t until during covid when we got our peloton that I started to revisit cardio workouts. When I do it, I feel physically, mentally, and spiritually better, the whole day long. And when I don’t do it, the shame and guilt work as effectively on my mental and physical and spiritual health. It can be challenging for me to be consistent. I often have setbacks like flare ups from my fibro/EDS (not sure which it is anymore), and then I lose my stride. Gardening season creeps in and I end up spending my day planting, harvesting, processing, photographing, and chasing cabbage white butterflies.

But if there’s one thing I do right this year, it’s prioritize my body so that I can give it its best shot at a great decade ahead. I’ve already ridden the bike today, and will be going on a 3 mile walk early this afternoon. I’ve even invested in insulated coveralls so I can keep walking when winter eventually descends and the wind chill dips well below zero. Join me in carving out an hour a day (or more) for physical activity. It might be the hardest and best thing we do all year for ourselves and our gardens.