With each new year comes another opportunity to create a new start on a spectacular new garden! It is time for Planning a New Garden.
Planning a New Garden – An Optimistic Outlook
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
Audrey Hepburn
It’s an optimistic view that I tend to take this time of year.
I have visions of sunny days, bees buzzing around beautiful flowers, and garden baskets filled with luscious tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. I can practically smell the aroma of basil and lavender as the wind drifts through my hair. ….and then I wake up and realize that it’s time to get started making that dream a reality.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon
Planning a New Garden – Getting Started
I will admit that I love the planning portion of gardening. I love choosing seeds, timing the plantings, arranging, and rearranging. I love drawing my gardens and planning my layouts. I love the possibilities.
I chose and ordered my seeds during the holidays and they are in and have now been sorted (multiple times), and listed on a spreadsheet. They now await their next transition point.
By the way, if you are looking for a good garden planner, you can order mine, Planning Your Best Garden. This indispensable planner is a fundamental building block of a successful gardening season. It will assist you in implementing all of the critical elements that go into creating a spectacular garden.
Planning a New Garden – You Have to do the Work
Of course, no matter how much dreaming or planning I do, my seeds won’t sprout into their full potential if I don’t do the hard work that is required. Those seeds and plants need me to do my part so that they can do theirs.
The last couple of years, here on the farm, things have been a little rough. From late and unexpected freezes to severe heat and drought and even to an onslaught of grasshoppers and tomato hornworms, it has been a rough haul.
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
Alfred Austin
Planning a New Garden – Learning from our Failures
Things certainly don’t always work out the way we plan them in our dreams, sometimes we have to take a detour on our path to a good harvest. However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan. What it means is that we need to step back, regroup and learn a lesson that we can carry forward.
You are certainly never too old to learn. I try to learn from everything that I do, success or failure. Last year’s mistakes and failures will help me add to my future success. …so that should make this year awesome! *insert sarcastic laugh
There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.
Janet Kilburn Phillips
Planning a New Garden – Changes Ahead
Here on Two Oaks Farmstead, we have been in a big ‘re-do’. We tore down our original raised garden beds. They had been in the ground long enough that they were having rot issues and I had already patched multiple areas. This is actually my choice. I don’t build my gardens with treated lumber because the chemicals will leach into the ground around my plants. I opt for regular wood and just fix them.
I decided that I needed to expand my greenhouse this year for more seedling space so I am in the process of doing that now. (That post will be upcoming) Admittedly, I am running a little behind my intentions there, but I’ll figure out a way to recover.
All of these items are parts of planning a new garden. Looking at where you will plant, taking care of your soil health, raising strong seedlings, and planning for their best position in the garden. Of course, that’s not all of the planning that you will need, but it is certainly enough to get you started.
I will be adding posts regularly that discuss various portions of the process in more detail to assist anyone else that is wanting and looking forward to a spectacular garden this year!
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You may also enjoy some of our other posts in gardening, homestead how-to’s, or farm kitchen.
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We also, as a homesteading family, have three additional blogs that might interest you.Two Oaks Farm Talkconcerns the more technical side of homesteading. We discuss subjects like gardening, food prep, and farm building and construction with lots of tutorials!
Farm Raised Familyis basically a hub for everything under the Two Oaks Farmstead umbrella. You can learn a great deal about all parts of the farmstead there. TheFarm Raised Family blogfocuses on financial matters such as budgeting, saving, and more and on current events affecting families.
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Farm Life and Freedomis the new podcast we are in the process of launching! It is going to be so much fun!
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