First off, I'd like to thank everyone! This is only my 2nd swap, but I actually "sold" more packs than I "bought" this year. I am completely humbled!!!

I hope everyone has great success this coming gardening season. But as this garden season is over and we are anticipating next year, I'm curious... what are your gardening goals for 2020?

My personal goals for my garden are:
-To produce more tomatoes in my 48 square foot bed than the 200 I got this year so we can make more tomato sauce, tomato soup, tomato jam, tomato relish, dehydrated tomatoes, and fresh eats.
-Determine which dark and plum tomato(es) do best for me. I'll be doing a comparison of Paul Robeson, Black Krim, Everret's Rusty Oxheart, Black Beauty for a dark comparison and San Marzano Redorta, Opalka, Jersey Devil, and Amish Paste for the plum/paste tomatoes and then figure out which two of all my others will be planted with my BoxCar WIllie and Hillbilly.
-To produce/keep more of the winter squash I grew this year (as in not stolen by people or ground hogs).
-Have a better year for peppers as it was a down year for me.
---I'd also like to try making my own hot sauce, but I've never tried that.
-Keep my asparagus bed alive so we can hopefully eat some fresh asparagus in 2021.
-Get my berry bushes (blackberry, black raspberry, and blueberry varieties) to be healthier and more productive.
-Get my fig bushes currently being overwintered in my office into the ground next year so they can become a permanent fixture outside.
-Get some of the seeds I got this year to produce a higher number of seeds for me to use in 2021 (Black Chick Peas & Red Swan beans)
-Try to get carrots and onions to do well from seed for the first time


So, what are some of your goals?

My goals are :
To do wintersowing right this year.
To transition to container gardening and a drip irrigation system.
To successfully grow a massive display of Japanese morning glories where the deer can't get them.
Those were last year's goals that I failed to achieve.
Maybe I can move on to new challenges the following year.

@hammerojustice. Wow! Just some food for thought...last summer I was blessed beyond belief with tomatoes. One of my surprises of the year, was I made a zippy tomato juice with my surplus of tomatoes plus some jalapeños and garlic. If you're into spicy things, I quite enjoyed it.

However you are doing the asparagus...its worth the wait. Fresh asparagus is quite the treat - my wife loves it so I've devoted a whole raised bed to asparagus and its companion friend the strawberry. Happy wife/happy life.

My goals are to do a better job with documentation...both in seed starting and in the actual planting/growing...and to give vermicomposting a try. My worms should be here tomorrow and I've got a nice home already built (complete with ventilation shaft ). I also plan to expand my Winter Sowing, which is kind of tricky here in this climate, but I'm attempting to introduce/populate native species around my property and many of these seeds require stratification.

Yes, documentation!!!! That too

& @ricelg, I love that juice idea!

My goal is to have a prettier front yard than all my neighbors on the block and a more interesting/productive/colorful backyard than all the neighbors too!

Oh, and make sure I keep up with the never-ending task of eradicating invasive vines from the backyard. I'm an organic gardener but I may have to resort to some chemicals as I have these vines taking over my Drift roses.

Goooooaaaaallls...

Ok, we write it down now we've got someone to be accountable to right? lol

Documentation # 1 - Thought I had a plan last year ~ ~ ok next year - NO MORE SHARPIES!!!! I think I have a better plan for at least marking my plants. I did start off real well with my documentation, but then that life thing gets in the way. This next year I'm just hoping to keep all the labels in place and legible. I do want to experiment with some crosses so if I can keep those well documented that will be a win.

Variety # 2 - I've been amassing many varieties of all kinds of plant seeds. I want to take 2- 3 types of plants, grow all the varieties and narrow down the ones I really like.

Pure Seed # 3 - I want to try my hand at producing seed for commercial sales. I have a fairly short season and am sharing the backyard of a city lot, so not much space either. I'll need to identify a couple of plants and grow solely those varieties to eliminate cross pollination.

We'll see how the year goes!

rockpile1369 said:Goooooaaaaallls...

Ok, we write it down now we've got someone to be accountable to right? lol

Documentation # 1 - Thought I had a plan last year ~ ~ ok next year - NO MORE SHARPIES!!!! I think I have a better plan for at least marking my plants. I did start off real well with my documentation, but then that life thing gets in the way. This next year I'm just hoping to keep all the labels in place and legible. I do want to experiment with some crosses so if I can keep those well documented that will be a win.

Variety # 2 - I've been amassing many varieties of all kinds of plant seeds. I want to take 2- 3 types of plants, grow all the varieties and narrow down the ones I really like.

Pure Seed # 3 - I want to try my hand at producing seed for commercial sales. I have a fairly short season and am sharing the backyard of a city lot, so not much space either. I'll need to identify a couple of plants and grow solely those varieties to eliminate cross pollination.

We'll see how the year goes!

What variety for #2 are you thinking? That's kind of what I'm doing with my tomatoes this year by style and only picked 4 of each color/style

My goals...we do a spring plant sale here. We grow all our starts in our greenhouses, and sell a lot of flower/vegetable starts. I'm planning on expanding that a lot in the next couple of years by buying a professional greenhouse, but this year I plan on expanding by doing more succulent starts, pineapple tops, spider plant starts, and other houseplants in homemade macramé hangings. That's what our new customers seem to always be looking for, though they always walk out with a tomato or two.

We're also getting a milk cow, though, so I might not get much done this year in the way of garden expansion.

Hammerojustice said:
What variety for #2 are you thinking? That's kind of what I'm doing with my tomatoes this year by style and only picked 4 of each color/style

So I'm doing Tomatos for #3 - I'll only be growing one, maaaybe two types of tomatos this year, even though they don't cross pollinate quite as easily as other plants I don't want to take chances.

For my grow all the varieties, I'll probably plant peppers, Zinnias and Marigolds, maybe basil also, but that's really pushing my space limits.

I am not doing a huge space of things either ,

I just got through doing my my first winter sow , Turtlehead , hops tree , prairie clover , Hosta Couple of nanking cherry seeds (so far failed every time with the cherry seeds )

As to the was not going to take any seeds this year ,, I have 19 more to do in a few weeks , yeah well ,,,the impossible still is ,,

It is great when plants grow and delight ,

My goal will be to try to grow or at least start all the seeds I'll be getting for all the seed exchanges this year. I've got 145 seeds packets coming now (25 NARGS, 23 AGS, 16 SRGC and now 81 from here) and that is just from main seed exchanges, if I included surplus seeds from the exchanges then I might get to 250. So I've got my work cut out for me.

PlantMatt said:My goal will be to try to grow or at least start all the seeds I'll be getting for all the seed exchanges this year. I've got 145 seeds packets coming now (25 NARGS, 23 AGS, 16 SRGC and now 81 from here) and that is just from main seed exchanges, if I included surplus seeds from the exchanges then I might get to 250. So I've got my work cut out for me.

@PlantMatt, what seed exchanges do the acronyms stand for?

gngrbluiz said:

@PlantMatt, what seed exchanges do the acronyms stand for?

NARGS: North American Rock Garden Society
AGS: Alpine Garden Society
SRGC: Scottish Rock Garden Club

My goal is to start as many new kinds of seeds as I can inside of my greenhouse now that it's fixed up and ready to start growing stuff again. Am so excited to get started.
Happy gardening everyone.

Agoo said:My goal is to start as many new kinds of seeds as I can inside of my greenhouse now that it's fixed up and ready to start growing stuff again. Am so excited to get started.
Happy gardening everyone.

This year, I started everything by seed except for the sage and oregano... And i don't have a greenhouse.... I started everything in our house... But oh so rewarding

I'm planning on doing a lot of winter/spring sowing as well as direct planting. I'm redoing my entire yard in the next few years. Some things will stay in the nursery bed until they're big enough to plant out. The back yard is planned as a bird/butterfly area so I need to start the shrubs that will feed & house them.

I have a question. When you direct sow do you have to keep all leaves, etc. off of the area until the seeds sprout? How do you keep weeds from sprouting?

Leslie, notsure about other areas but here our area is so dry I have to keep it mulched or it would dry out so bad between daily waterings not much would germinate. Hope that helps.

Thank you.

Lalambchop1, yes I keep them well weeded for awhile and I try to lay mulch in between the rows to help keep them from sprouting...Veggies I usually direct sow, everything else...winter sowing

My goals for 2020:

~Keep the two tiered flower bed in front weeded better, add more groundcovers, more shrubby plants and carefree plants. I realized we don't see it much except from the window. It is our display garden sorta because it faces the road but for us, its outside our fence which means we hardly ever see it up close or I weed it. The dogs don't like when I'm not with them either lol

~Start my little flower border out front with annuals like zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons :)

~Add little things to our garden to make it our home more and enjoy it more!

~Michael

More of these for better organic nutrients for the plants

Kind of a well worms ,,