2023 Spring Garden Plan
It’s been about a month and a half since we built our dream garden. This week, we’re finally planting it out! Today, I wanted to share my garden plan.
First, please know that in this season of gardening, I am learning. I will make a ton of naive, and probably wrong, choices.
For most of my life, I have been frustratingly paralyzed by the fear of failure. This has taken a ton of forms, but mostly circuitously researching. Researching certainly is important for so many things, but there comes a point where it has to followed by action. And that’s usually what halts me in my tracks.
I don’t want this garden to be another byproduct of that, so my goal is to obnoxiously share. The entire process, even the frustrating parts.
Do I feel 100% “ready” to start a garden? No. But I love to learn, so I’m looking at this as a learning opportunity that I’ll be sharing along the way.
Florida gardening appears to be sort of a Catch-22. On the one hand, theoretically, we can grow all year. But on the flip side, there are quite a few plants that simply can’t handle Florida’s heat and unpredictable weather.
For example, because I’m a little late starting my spring garden, there are some things it’s just too late to seed out at this point. Last weekend, I bought some already-started tomato plants and was gifted some some more. This will hopefully allow me to have a harvest before the unbearable heat sets in.
I also two sugar baby watermelon plants, an eggplant, and a calendula. My friend gifted cabbage, eggplant, and banana pepper seedlings as well.
My garden plan includes directly seeding the following:
- Seminole Pumpkins
- Corn
- Cucumbers
- Zucchini
- Yellow Squash
- String beans
- Black-eyed peas
- Sunflower
- Roselle (Florida cranberry)
While I’m busy plotting my garden this week, my husband has worked on building a fresh water line to our well. Our salt-treated water, we feel, just isn’t conducive to growing food that will thrive in Florida’s late spring (which sometimes feels like early summer).
In the meantime, we’ve been hauling water up from the lake to water our plants. Very turn-of-the-century of us.
I hope you’ll follow along for the successes and pivots in the garden. I refuse to say failure because, as a good friend reminded me this week, there are not failures in the garden, only opportunities to learn.
