Northern hemisphere gardeners - share your 2024 plans!
Please share your garden plans, ideas, and wildly overambitious green fantasies here!
Weird and treacherous climate change weather is distorting my garden sense. Normally, it's not a good idea to plant anything tender until late May here, but I'm betting we won't get frost past May 1 this year, or nothing that can't be handled with strategic use of row covers and cloches.
My fingers are itching to get the hot peppers started. I'm restraining myself from starting the tomatoes too early (again!), and the snapdragons and other slow annual flowers are starting to germinate. I could probably sow kale now.
We'll see which of last year's bulbs survived the critters until the spring. Reinforcement of the deer fencing is happening as soon as the ground is thawed deeply enough to set proper posts, and dry enough to work with wood frames and cattle panel.
I'm going to get a few logs set up for shiitakes, oysters, maitake, and maybe see if last year's happenstance wood chip pile morels can be encouraged. Fingers-crossed that December's wild garlic (ramps) test planting took hold - if that works, I'll get more slips and expand the patch in more of the shady areas that aren't suitable for much else.
Depending on how my hands and spouse's shoulders are holding up, there's a lot of digging in this year's permaculture expansion. A couple of Hugelkultur beds, some (mostly?) American chestnut trees, more berries and apples, planting the overwintered pawpaws, and another try at elderberries. I've got vague plans for building a grape arbor this year, but that's going to depend on availability of spouse's hands during the busy winery season.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
I've been depressed and lazy the past couple of years, and yields and quality have suffered. My main goal for this year is just to be Good At Gardening again.
We'll do the usual bed full of herbs. Probably trim back some of the mass of thyme that's growing faster than we can use it, and add more oregano and basil. Also returning: cucumbers, soybeans, those little yellow pear-shaped mini tomatoes, some variety of full-sized tomatoes, and probably one okra plant.
I tried a small patch of chickpeas last year, but didn't get nearly enough to make it worth the space and effort. Dill will also not be returning because it turns out we don't use dill for anything. I'm not sure what I was thinking.
I'd like to find some interesting sweet peppers to grow (suggestions welcome!). I've grown great spicy peppers before, but I can't really use them for much because my partner doesn't do spicy food.
We have some larger plants (apple trees and berry bushes) that produce tiny amounts of fruit, and I'd like to try to figure out why.
We're going to try a swarm of praying mantii for pest control. This is at least 50% because they're cute.
Ooooh do post pictures of your millions of baby praying mantis when they hatch. They are super cute.
I hear you - I've been struggling with bad arthritis, especially in my hands, and couldn't keep up with gardening at all last year. The treatment finally seems to have caught up, and I'm hoping to be on top of things this year.
I'm interested to see what persisted from last year's herb bed - sage and rosemary are a little iffy in an exposed spot in zone 6b. Last year, I had a bumper crop of pineapple sage, which is supposed to be perennial in Zone 7, and it might have survived. We do use dill for a number of recipes (homemade gravlax is incredible with truly fresh dill) - it can be dried or frozen, and it's easy to save seeds.
Can't help you much with sweet peppers - I only grow hots because the local stores don't carry anything warmer than jalapenos.
We had to move the most productive raspberry canes last year due to construction, so I'm not expecting much this year. I'm also planning to relocate struggling blueberry plants - they're not getting enough sun, and the bed they're in is half sand so it's impossible to keep the soil pH where it should be.
I'd love to try growing more grains and pulses, but deer fencing is expensive. Rumor has it that millet, quinoa, and amaranth aren't so attractive to deer, and they're pretty enough that I might try working them into the unfenced flower beds.
I have plans to try and grow a bunch of different kinds of mint and a few other plants to make a tea garden (zone 6) this spring.
Watch out for mint. It spreads rapidly, and it's hard to control. I've switched to growing herbs like mint in pots on my deck, making it harder for them to spread (but still not impossible).
Speaking of tea gardens, I've just ordered some Camellia Sinensis (Tea Plant) seeds. I'm in zone 6 and they're typically better suited to zones 7-9, so it's possible they'll die off over winter, but I'm also going to try growing one in a pot that I can bring indoors each winter.
Oh, do beware of mints - you'll have them everywhere without sufficient care. The previous owners of our house left us with at least six varieties growing like weeds. I'm content to let the anise hyssop go everywhere it wants, since it's shade-tolerant, outcompetes a couple of invasive plants we can't quite eradicate, and makes a lovely tea or ice cream. The catnip also gets used. Wild bergamot (bee balm) has elegant flowers, makes a nice tea, and is pollinator-friendly. Bergamot is susceptible to powdery mildew, though, so it's not running rampant all over the borders.
Spearmint, orange mint, chocolate mint, and the others had to be uprooted and containerized. They'll seed vigorously and propagate by runners, even among stones, mulch, and landscape fabric.
There's a local farm growing tea bushes in greenhouses here - they say it's all solar, no heat inputs, and the tea is doing fine, as well as jasmine and some other subtropical botanical ingredients. In fact, their Earl Gray is the best I've ever had, and an international award winner.
So yes, you should be able to grow it in a patio pot and overwinter it indoors.
My sympathies. Did you manage to get it all? It was self-inflicted for me, but even when I thought I'd gotten it all, it still popped up the next year.
If I'm ever up in that part of Michigan, I'll have to stop in and try a cup. But wow! That is some expensive tea, even before shipping (which is another $50 to my part of Canada).
Mint's gonna mint. I still have to dig it out of the herb and flower beds whenever I see it. At least it's not comfrey or goutweed, which regrow from the tiniest pieces.
Light of Day is expensive, but I've found their teas are potent enough to rebrew a couple of times, and that size tin is good for about six months of daily consumption. They also pay local living wages, which is nearly unheard of in agriculture. Not sure why shipping to Canada is so expensive - tax and tariffs?
My fiance and I just bought a house this past year and it has an adorable little backyard with a beautiful dogwood tree I can't wait to see flower, a couple of hydrangeas, crepe Myrtles, and a few other random plants I need to identify. When we first moved in the whole yard was severely overgrown with weeds and thistles. Thankfully I've taken care of that for now, but am anticipating it trying to come back early in spring so I'll have to make sure I'm on top of it.
Other than managing weeds, I need to learn how to take care of these plants, transplant some for better yard design, and just try to learn and experiment with gardening for the first time. Does anyone have any tips for beginners?
Tip: buy seedlings, don't bother from seed.
This is advice I got from Frankie Flower's excellent beginners book that I struggle to somehow keep believing every spring, and then by fall realise once again the wisdom of his words.
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We've been buying seedlings for the past several years, and are going to start from seed this year. Maybe it's a huge mistake, but hopefully the fact that we're not absolute beginners at gardening (though we are beginners at starting from seed) will help us succeed. In addition to buying a bunch of different seeds, I also saved a bunch of seeds from last year (including from some possibly hybrid plants), so that's an additional experiment that probably shouldn't happen in my first year of starting from seed, but because I lack wisdom, I'll be doing it anyway.
Seed starting is generally easy and fun with the right equipment and timing. The lesson I've learned is not to start seeds indoors too early - the plants crowd each other, get spindly, and have weak growth when planted out. Pay attention to recommended starting dates for your zone (use the 2023 USDA zone map), and you should do fine.
Most plants don't cross-pollinate and hybridize as easily as you might think; different flowering times among varieties are common. Peppers are the big exception - they flower continuously and the pollen is both pollinator and wind-borne.
Saving seeds from commercial hybrids may not be worth it, though - usually, about 3/4 of the progeny won't have the expensive, recessive disease-resistance or yield traits of the parent plants.
If you can, get your seedlings from local nurseries and farms, not big box home and garden stores. I'm assuming you're in the U.S. - nearly everything I've gotten from Home Depot, Lowe's, or Meijer came with diseases and pests.
It's tempting to plant a lot - those seedlings look small and lonely at first. But crowding will diminish yields, makes it difficult to control weeds, and fosters diseases. Pay attention to the recommended spacing, mulch generously between plants, water as often as needed to keep the soil damp at a knuckle's depth below the surface. Stick with organic fertilizers for food plants. Check leaves periodically for holes or spots - there are decent pest/disease references online, or look up your local agricultural extension. Pay attention to what thrives in yards around your neighborhood.
If there's a farmer's market, consult with vendors who have good-looking organic produce and plants for sale.
That's the basics.
Seeds are so much cheaper than seedlings. A pack of 500 seeds is like $5 or less. Around here seedlings run $3-5 each. Germination rates in most seed packs is on the order of 95%.
As my hippie neighbor told me:
Just add like 3-5 seeds instead of 1 in each hole. If you get too many growing, thin them out appropriately, and chuck the ones you yanked in a compost bin. Circle of life.
Plant according to direct-sow directions, not too early, not too late. Water mostly- daily. Be patient, and it'll almost certainly do alright.
If you spend 10 minutes every day yanking weed sprouts as they come up, it'll be a lot easier than waiting till they're larger.
Oh if you're just using your yard dirt, spreading out a about an inch of compost on top then mixing it in will do wonders.
For as small as my community is, folks are very deeply into gardening. The public library has a seed bank, the local conservancy holds a seed swap event, a couple of the organic farms sell spare locally conserved seeds, and the ag stores sell organic garden seeds in ounce and pound quantities. I'll buy exotics online to experiment with. Hot pepper seeds can be stupidly expensive, but they're easy to save if you get any fruit.
Keeping the usual caveats in mind (make sure the vendor is based in the same country, is growing their own rare plants, not harvesting endangered species on public land), I have gotten native rare perennial plants on Etsy successfully.
If you've got doubts about your garden soil, even 6" raised beds filled with 50/50 compost and topsoil will work well. In Florida, on pure coral limestone, we used Mel's Mix in a small square-foot garden, and got bumper crops of everything.
Zone 7/8a...right on a border. I was planning to start planting some early beets, cabbage, spinach, and spring onions next weekend, but now a 3 day cold snap + snow is in the forecast so now I'll probably hold off until March. Maybe I'll sprout a few on the porch and transplant.
I'd been neglectful in crop rotation, so the beds with beans and tomatos are getting a rest, and I'll probably just grow a few in the corn rows.
Speaking of, the no-till corn experiment last year went swimmingly. So expanding it to have about 30 plants, in groups of 10 seperated by 1.5 weeks. Even if not a huge food producer is a great privacy screen in a section of yard that is otherwise barred from having a fence,
The herb garden is getting mostly redone, although the rosemary rooted well and is on its way to a rosemary shrubbery.
Major goal this year is to better manage the powdery mildew...got lazy about pruning and several things got gross.
This is my 8th year outside of Vancouver and I'm beginnings to finally stop dreaming and starting gardens in February. Maybe. Ask me again what's dying under my care at the end of the month.
First task will be to see which perennials made it through the winter. I'm super hoping the asperagus made it.
We planted potatoes last year but honestly not big fans of them. We eat probably less than $20 worth a year: it's just easier to buy them at this rate.
Cherry tomatoes, as usual.
The plan this year is to properly weed and fertilizer the berries so we can have more than a random stroll through the crown land. What's the point of growing our own if they yeild so much less than what we can forage right?
Hoping to find spring mushrooms in the forest. Not yet. Everything is under a meter of snow right now.
I've discovered to my delight that asparagus is really hard to kill if it grows at all. After 2022-2023's wild cycles of drought, flood, impromptu relocation due to an impending driveway collapse, etc., we've got a bigger asparagus patch than we started with, and hope to be able to harvest this spring.
I think cane berries do fine with an inch or two of compost in spring and fall, nothing fancier than that.
Oh I hope so....I've tried asparagus before and either had to move, animal, or some other disaster....I do hope it establishes and then never goes away.
I need hardy, self sustaining plants :/
Zone 6b. Last year ended with an additional raised 12x9 garden bed, which brings the grand total to 3.
One bed is for hot peppers. That includes cayenne long reds, scotch bonnet freeport orange, hungarian wax, and king of the north peppers.
Next bed is for pickling cucumbers. I need to setup the trellis system again. Final bed is a variety of tomatoes, mostly for sauces, with some beefsteak varieties as well.
My newest addition is going to be cannabis. My state is legal to grow in and figure I'd start with a nice outdoor grow in some grow bags. Plan is to treat them just like any other plant in the vegetable garden.
My DIY projects are to build a greenhouse (not likely to be done this year) and a garden path (most likely to be done).
Lastly, for landscaping I plan on adding a Northern Catalpa tree to the front, continue expansions for the wildflower and milkweed gardens, and mulch front beds. I'm excited!
I'd love to hear about growing cucumbers in 6b. The region I'm in has huge problems with Colorado potato beetles, powdery mildew, mosaic viruses, etc. I try to grow heirlooms and save seeds, but I think I'll have to find resistant hybrids if I want to try cukes again.
I'm in a legal cannabis state as well, but it's relatively cheap and I don't use enough to make it worth scarce landscape space. It might make a pretty border plant...
Me and my partner just had our garden done and I have two big, wonderful looking planters, probably two foot x six foot so I'll br throwing loads of potatoes in there along with carrots, leeks etc.
I did have a greenhouse (simply a metal frame with a clear plastic covering but a recent storm literally tore the covering and the roof off and blew it away. Don't know where it went so no greenhouse this year but I'll maybe look to get an actual glass one installed for next year.
Other than that I'll grow strawberries in my hanging basket, some herbs and stuff in my herb basket and maybe some sort of squash in my plastic planter.
Nothing too crazy but I want a ton of potatoes this year, the ones in the shops pale in comparison to fresh out of the ground potatoes.
Frankly, I'll be happy just to somehow revive my little Peace Lily in my office. It is alive, but looks depressed. I've done whatever I've read should be done, including watering the "right" amount, providing sunlight, avoiding cold air/drafts, providing some fertilizer, and pruning dead parts.
The only thing I think could be done that I haven't done yet is repot it in new soil.
San Francisco Bay Area California USA. Haven't started yet, but plans include kale, broccoli, squash, sunflowers, tomatoes and possibly more.
Bought a house for retirement last fall and been doing reno all winter, but I moved my peonies, roses, clematis, irises and a few daylilies. I moved the hostas too but the deer got them late fall and they are all goners.
Excited and anxious to see what makes it as we moved north, although the new USDA charts make it seem like I should be good, we will see. I'll be checking out the garden centers to see what's locally available and hopefully the farmers market will have some herbs and veg plants for sale as we've had no time to tend to seeds.
Hostas are actually capable of bouncing back from deer grazing if they get enough green growth to store up energy in their roots. Peonies, roses, clematis, irises, and daylilies are all fine as far north as Zone 5. For roses, you need to pay attention to fungus infections and use sulfur regularly if the climate is wetter as well as colder. Woody ornamentals that do well in the North include lilacs, hydrangeas, dogwood, crabapples, Japanese maples, redbud, aralia, amelanchier, forsythia... there's really a great range of landscape plants even before you get to evergreens and bulbs.
If you've moved north, one thing to be aware of, in addition to temperature zone, is day length. It's harder to grow anything in partial shade because there are so few total hours of sun to begin with and the sun angles vary so much. You'll want to map your new property throughout the year to make sure that beds which seems like full sun in spring aren't actually in full shade after the trees leaf out and the arc of the sun moves south after the solstice.
Thanks for the advice, moving from zone 5 to zone 4. North north. The deer actually pulled the hosta out by the roots! I've had deer here as well and they ignored my hostas. Guess northwoods deer love them.
They lady who owned the house before us had a pretty healthy shrub rose. I cut out all the deadwood last fall. She left coreopsis, veronica, daylilies, lilac bushes and what might by a non vining clematis. Hoping to see what else pops up in spring.
This will be a fun spring. I have plans to expand the flower garden on 3 side of the house amd create at least one, maybe two paths. From fall I know which way the sun moves so I think I know where to plant the veg. Fingers crossed I have some success and that the soil tests in my favor.
I'm apparently in zone 8a (didn't realize it was so high)! I ordered a dwarf lilac that I'm planning on growing in a container -- I have a big balcony that can handle the size and lilacs are by far my favorite flower. I'm hoping I can care for it well enough, since I know they're not ideal for containers.
I've also started germinating some chili pepper plants indoors, but it'll be a while before it's hot and bright enough outside for them, so I've got a cheap grow light in my spare bathroom to keep them in until it's suitable weather outside. Grocery stores here in Germany basically never have fresh chilis, so this is going to be the first proper vegetable I'm growing.
My Chinese chives from last year are doing great too. I expected them to go dormant over the winter but I guess it wasn't cold enough because quite a lot has grown since I cut them back for the winter! My parsley from last year also grew some new sprouts over the winter, but afaik parsley is basically an annual as far as taste is concerned so I might just try planting some new seeds for it once it's a little warmer.
The one thing I really wish I had on hand fresh when I want it is cilantro, since the grocery stores here often don't have it and what they have barely tastes like anything, but everything I've heard is that it's kinda a pain and not worth it to grow cilantro at home. Hrm.
If your parsley leaves are tired, you can always dig up the root and have parsnip for cooking.
Cilantro is easy to grow, and will self-seed if the flower heads are left undisturbed. The most difficult thing about it is that it tends to bolt quickly when temperatures are steadily above 25 °C, which is all too common now. You can delay bolting somewhat by pinching off the flowering tops. More heat-tolerant cilantro varieties are available, too. But the easiest strategy is to just keep planting new seeds at two or three week intervals through the growing season, like lettuce. Leave the tops of the older plants to set seed, and you've got a source of coriander and new cilantro plants.
ooh maybe this will be a project this year then... unfortunately our summers get above 25 C these days and Germany is allergic to air conditioning even in a new building like mine, so I suspect there'll be some unavoidable bolting issues. But if the end result is just more cilantro seeds, might as well try it!
Zone 6b. Last few years, I kept a native pollinator garden and been pretty easy to manage. Last year, I started to grow some hot peppers. Some varieties came out really well and others not so much. But im better equipped, I just need to start earlier. I am planning to do the same as last year, but start seeding indoors in march. Not sure what else to grow since we have bears in the area. It would be nice to get a fence going, but I still don't want to chance it.
I'm with you on hot peppers. They're easy to start from seed, and you need the head start indoors due to the long maturation time. Even with a longer frost-free growing season, it's hard to get enough warm, sunny days otherwise.
We've had neighborhood bears in our area, but they mostly go after bird feeders and leave vegetables alone. Our local deer, on the other hand, have learned to love hot pepper spray on everything. They got into the garden enclosure last year and ate my pepper plants down to the ground just as they were setting fruit. This year, it's better deer fencing and commercial deer repellent applied regularly.
Radish, Tomatoes, Carrots and Longbeans (is that's how they're called? Langeboon in Dutch).
Also this year I want to have a certain type of flower that my grandfather used to grow then I was little. (they're with yellow puffy leaves and brown little spots)