New Year Gardening Plans. Part I

While there isn’t much work to do in my garden yet, it is a good time to make a constructive new year gardening plan.
A good place to start would be to outline the most successful growths of the previous year and deciding on places and quantities to grow this new year. The absolute hit of my vegetable garden last year were tomatoes. While not requiring a lot of care, several bushes provided us with splendid fruits throughout the summer and fall. Moreover, if the implausible frost didn’t hit in the first days of December, I still could have been provided with green tomatoes (which actually were turning red several days after being picked, how nice). Thus, I will definitely plan tomatoes this year as well. Five or six plants should be enough and the location will be the same (I will need to fertilize the soil though). I also want to plant one tomato bush in a big pot. I’ve heard that tomatoes can be grown in pots as well; we’ll see about that.



Another easy and productive produce in my little garden was garlic. There was very little work involved; all I did was planting and several months later harvesting. I have to admit that the garlic heads weren’t quite big, but I imagine bigger size can be achieved this year by fertilizing the soil and planting garlic cloves earlier. In fact, I already planted some garlic in my garden, but I intend to plant some more one of these days.
I have to give credit to the basil as well. I was very pleased with a few small pots of this herb that I had on my deck. Fresh basil is a great addition to many dishes, but it is quite costly at the produce stores. Throughout the summer, I had this wonderful herb at hand. I still have seeds that I bought last year, and I am going to sow them in the same pots this year as well.
What about parsley? It grew very well last year (and I still occasionally pick a few branches), but it is a biennial plant and I am not sure how it’s going to behave this year. I think I will sow some more seeds this year (luckily, I still have them from last year) just to be on the safe side.
For that reason, this year I will definitely grow tomatoes, garlic, basil, and parsley. My little garden, however, won’t be limited to that. There are some cultures that I failed at growing last year, but I’m eager to try growing them again.