Happy Thursday! Today I wanted to spend some time looking back on my 2024 garden and looking forward to my 2025 garden plans! See past gardening posts
here.
In 2024 I started lots of things from seed: all of our tomato plants, pepper plants, strawflowers, marigolds, and a few other bits. I love starting my own seeds. It's a good excuse to start the season early, and I can choose exactly what varieties I want to grow! It's taken some trial and error to figure out a good setup but I feel pretty confident at this point.
On our driveway garden this year we kept things pretty simple. We grew four cherry tomato varieties (Sungold, Sunsugar, Cherry Bomb and Chocolate Pear) and three pepper varieties (Anaheim, Sweet Banana and Serrano). We also had our fig tree, dahlias, lantana and strawflowers. For the veg I was able to use all seed from the year before, which was nice! I needed to use some of them up. My favorite tomato is Sungold, which did well this year. The Chocolate Pear was one I'd gotten for free with a seed order a few years ago and just thought I'd try out. It ended up being a surprise hit! Very prolific and didn't crack. I put a bunch in the freezer for soups. Peppers did okay, the Serrano is always the most productive for us in containers and that didn't change this year!
For 2025 we're going to skip peppers altogether, we just didn't eat them much last year. For tomatoes we'll definitely grow sungold, but beyond that I'm not sure yet! I might try another new red cherry, or maybe a currant style tomato! I had a currant tomato in my community garden plot in Madison one year and it had SO much fruit. Might be fun to try that again.
My perennial patch in the front yard did really well again! We even had a little bunny visitor for a while.
On the topic of perennials, I started a bunch of Candytuft from see this year. We've had a white Candytuft plant for years and it's done super well. I was constantly seeing seed packets for a pink/purple/red Candytuft mix, but never plants. Finally I broke and bought a packet of seeds! They were really easy to start and soon I had some purple! I hope to start even more this year.
Of course I grew strawflowers last year. I ordered a wide mix of seeds from
Select Seeds and they did fantastic! I think it was one of my best strawflower years. I planted them at the bottom of the dahlia patch on both sides and I was constantly picking flowers. I'll always have these in my garden. I'm hoping to use up leftover seed from last year in 2025.
Another thing I grow every year without fail is marigolds! I just love them, especially the giant ones! I've been growing the
heirloom yellow Mission Giant Marigolds for a few years and in 2024 I discovered Burpee had a
hybrid orange Mission Giant! I couldn't help myself, I had to try them out. Unfortunately they weren't quite up to par with the yellow. First off, the yellow are heirloom, so I can save my own seeds at the end of each season. The orange are hybrid, so they won't be true from saved seed. More importantly, they just weren't quite the same blooms as the yellow, many looked like a regular giant marigold, without the frilly Chrysanthemum style of the yellow. They also had really weak stems, near the bloom, so they were quite floppy. I really wanted to love them, but I'm going to stick with the yellow and a regular giant orange this year!
I think the biggest success in my garden in 2024 was my dahlia seedling patch! I started seeds from Floret Flowers called "
Cancan Girls" that were all taken from their anemone breeding patch. The last few years of growing dahlia seedlings, I've really want to try getting some anemone style dahlias, but haven't had any luck. Well this packet of seeds hit it out of the park! I ended up with more anemone dahlias than I could save!! Above are a couple that I really loved. Hopefully the tubers survive their winter storage!
One new thing I tried this year in both the dahlia seedling patch and the main dahlia patch was
Hortonova netting. You place a few different levels of netting horizontally for the plants to grow up into, instead of staking each dahlia individually or corralling them with twine. I was a bit skeptical that it would work, but it was AMAZING! Easy to install (especially with two people), held up my plants all summer/fall, and was easy to remove and save at the end of the season. I was honestly blown away. Very excited to use this in years to come!
The main dahlia patch got a real upgrade this season! Our neighbors got a chip drop and had extra, so I was able to mulch the entire dahlia patch with wood chips!! It was so nice and it really kept the weeding and watering to a minimum this season.
Overall this was not a good dahlia year for me. I'm not sure why exactly, but my patch struggled. I had a bunch of plants that barely bloomed or didn't bloom at all. I still had plenty of blooms, and a few fun new varieties too, so not a total loss!
I haven't bought any new dahlia tubers yet this year, and I may not buy any. I have such a great mix of tubers already, and I'm really enjoying growing seedlings too. I collected seeds from my patch (which I still need to process!) and will hopefully be starting some of those this year.
Megan Dean was probably my favorite new variety I grew last year, a beautiful white/purple.
The other new variety I grew was Blyton Softer Gleam, which was beautiful!
That's a wrap on my 2024 garden! My love for gardening continues to grow each year (haha!), and I can't wait to get out in the dirt again this spring.
Happy Growing!
