Spring Garden Plan for 2024

I spent the weekend finalizing my 2024 spring garden plan, and I’m so very excited to share it with you today.

We are passionate about creating a home we never want to leave, and part of that is creating indoor and outdoor rooms we enjoy. I consider my garden an outdoor room and love planning it with the same intensity that I plan the other areas of my home.

Part of that planning involves both long- and short-term projects. This year’s spring One Room Challenge will focus on my garden. As I prepare for that, I’ve also been trying to get my spring garden planted ASAP.

Florida is wonderful for gardening; on the whole, we have many more months of gardening than most other states. However, our “spring” gardening starts sooner than everyone else’s. I’m rapidly approaching the time when it will be too late to plant much that can survive the summer heat.

Over the weekend, I planned out my vegetable garden. I love to research companion plants and other best practices to ensure that I’m making the most out of each of my garden beds. I even ordered a few more seed varieties from a local grower that I expect will be here mid-week.

I’ll be planting a few of my favorite performers from last spring such as black-eyed peas, okra, seminole pumpkins, yellow squash, and eggplant. I’m even giving two “disappointments” another go: cucumbers and sugar baby watermelons. But I decided to bid farewell to corn. I definitely want to give it a try again someday. I just wasn’t willing to commit so much effort and garden space to a crop that is notoriously challenging.

But I’m especially excited for a few new additions to my garden! I’m going to give potatoes a try, which I fully expect to be a giant failure because I’m about a month late planting. However, I love the idea of our garden serving our family’s specific tastes, and my oldest boy might be the biggest potato fan I know. It’s worth the experiment if even one or two work out for us. I’m also going to try pineapple ground cherries, which I read are a great deal like tomatillos. I’m also planning to give lima beans, kale, and scallions a try as well!

I even reordered roselle seeds, which I’m so very hopeful will find success in my garden this year. Since visiting Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ estate (the writer of the Yearling), I’ve been obsessed with this plant. However, roselle’s notoriously fickle germination rate has made it tricky for me; my germination rate is exactly 0%. I’m hopeful that my troubleshooting leads to some success this year.

Here are a few other elements that are a part of my spring garden plan:

• Install a drip irrigation system. Last summer was unusually dry in Florida, and I want to be more intentional about providing regular, deep watering for my plants as I don’t feel like I’m always the best judge of effective hand-wtaering.
• Compost more intentionally. I have a compost bin that we haphazardly fill, but my dream is to eventually produce enough compost to self-sufficiently refill my garden beds between seasons. Or at least supplement them, as needed, during growing season. I also want to begin “vermicomposting,” which very truthfully does freak me out (I’m not a creepy crawly fan). But I think this would be something fun that my boys would love to participate in this growing season.
• Save seeds for future seasons. Everything I’ve read points to seed saving being very easy to figure out. Next year, I want to grow items only from seeds I’ve saved. I’ll be sharing more of that journey throughout the season.

If you’re interested in any of my garden how-to’s or newbie knowledge I acquired in my first year, you can check out the gardening section of my website.