The 2023 season is officially underway! So I thought I'd share my garden plans for 2023 today.
The grow lights are on and I've begun theprocess of starting seeds. I start most of my seeds in our basement, with shop lights and a kitchen shelving unit. Last year I added two shower curtain liners to help trap some of the warmth and humidity. The seedlings seemed to like it! As in years past, I'll be growing a mix of cut flowers and vegetables. Let's start by talking flowers.
I'm still as hooked on dahlias as I've ever been! Although I'm adding less new varieties to my patch this year. I'm getting more particular about what I add, and I also don't have a lot of space to add more. Especially since this is the first year I'll be growing out some of my dahlia seedlings from last year. You can see all new varieties I'm trying out this year on
this pinterest board.
Most of the dahlias will be grown in our side yard, but I'll be growing a few in pots on the driveway again. I already have some in mind that I think will enjoy being grown in pots vs. in ground.
Dahlia seeds were started in early March and I've got more than 30 to germinate! So there should be a lot of dahlia seedlings this year. I grew these in our front yard last year and they did really well there, so I'm going to do that again. I can't wait to see what comes out of the seedlings. I collected the seeds from some of my plants last year, including a ton from Wine Eyed Jill. It will be interesting to see what I get.
Near the dahlias I'll be growing strawflowers again, they're one of my favorite flowers to grow.
Instead of morning glories on my arch this year I'm going to try a mini pumpkin variety (Jill-be-little)! I hope it works out. I'm just ready for something different in that spot.
I'll also be growing lots of marigolds, and filling my hanging baskets with inpatients. Specifically for the bees/pollinators I'm growing borage for the first time. I'm also trying out a dwarf sunflower variety. I don't have great luck with sunflowers in my yard, but I'm hopeful this one will do better. We'll see!
For vegetables we are really focused on tomatoes and peppers. For tomatoes it's all cherry varieties again, with two new-to-us varieties. We're growing Sungold and Sun Sugar, which we grew last year and loved. New this year is Cherry Bomb and Tomatoberry. We're pretty sure we got some Tomatoberry fruits in our CSA last year, so we're excited to try growing it. For peppers we're keeping things pretty much the same as last year. We're growing Goddess (Banana), Highlander (Anaheim), Lunchbox (sweet snacking), and Flaming Jade (Serrano).
This will be the first year that I am starting all of our peppers from seed. I started all the tomatoes last year and had such great luck with it. The one pepper variety I grew from seed last year was so far ahead of the nursery plants I bought. So I figured why not grow them all from seed! I love seed starting so I really didn't need much convincing.
In our two largest grow bags we're growing Walla Walla onions again. We absolutely loved being able to walk out into the garden in the evening to pick onions for dinner. I ordered onion starts again, from Johnny's Seeds. Other than that, I'll grow a good amount of arugula in early Spring. I usually try to do more early spring vegetables, but I am often needing to pull things early in order to plant out the tomatoes and peppers, so I'm avoiding doing too much this year.
Late last season one of Michael's coworkers generously gifted us one of his fig trees, so this will be our first full season taking care of it! It's been overwintering in our garage and in the next few weeks I'll be repotting and pruning it. I hope it enjoys our driveway, because the figs we picked off of it last season were incredible! It's a Brown Turkey Fig.
We have a new bed to fill up after out Japanese maple tree died last year. That will be a fun Spring project, deciding what to put in that space! I have some hostas to move back into place, but I think we're also going to add something larger like a smoke bush or something. I can't wait to go plant shopping!
Happy Gardening!
