5 New Things in the Garden

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Self Sowing Garden, reseeding plants
Self Sowing Garden

Unfortunately I don’t have any new things to share with you like my title says.  The new things in the garden refers to what new things I would like to accomplish with my garden this year. I’ve been doing a lot of virtual gardening lately; looking at old photos of the garden and I glimpsed a few new things that I added last year. New things like my self-seeding garden, my arbor, quite a few new plants, and I can’t leave out my greenhouse shed (started a new feature on it today but it’s not ready to blog about yet!).

This time of year in 2009 I was rearranging the vegetable garden to fit into a better layout. Of course you could go look at my project list to get an idea of some of the larger projects I’d like to tackle but let’s go somewhere else for right now and brainstorm 5 new things that I want to add to the garden.

  1. New heirloom vegetables to try. The heirloom seeds have been purchased but none have been planted yet. This week I hope to get many of my vegetable seeds going to get them ready for spring planting. 
  2. Add more penstemon varieties! Penstemon is such a great plant – easy to grow – great for hummingbirds, bees, and other pollinators – it looks great – and of course it is easy to propagate.
  3. Make the garden more child friendly. As my children grow older they fend for themselves a lot more. Maybe fending is the wrong word.  I mean that they roam about the yard, play on the swingset I built, and are becoming more independent. I’m still there whenever they are but they seem to need me less and entertain each other more. I want them to enjoy the garden and have fun with it. One idea I had was a sunflower maze – nothing huge just something for them to run around inside and explore. I’ve toyed with the idea of a gourd tunnel for a couple years now, maybe I’ll actually do it this year!
  4. Hillside gardens. The slope is huge and looks very unkempt most of the year. In the fall the golden rod glows with snakeroot and ironweed and it looks nice but the rest of the time it’s a scraggly mess. I’d like to add one or two garden beds on the slope to help the slope become more interesting year round. 
  5. Crazy about canning. Recently we enjoyed some very delicious (homemade) tomato soup with some of the summer vegetables we canned. I really want to do more canning to help lower our food budget and raise our food quality over the winter!

There are 5 things that hopefully will be new (or improved in the case of number 5) in my garden later this year.

Garden Blogger Assignment:

Write a post about the 5 Things That Will Be New in Your Garden this year! Try to be specific and imaginative. It doesn’t matter if you think you can get them done, just write what you want. Try to put up a post by Friday February 26th and I’ll link to it here.  It’s still February (and winter) which means most of us are still only dreaming about gardening!

Completed Assignments:

  • Tom has a lot of work on his plate with vines, fruit trees, a meadow project and more – go check out Tom’s 5 New Things for his garden!
  • A proper vegetable garden, butterfly attracting plants, and new layers on the wall are on the agenda (among many things) at The Great Wall of Lutz!
  • One project I’m really looking forward to seeing is the pergola over at Shady Gardener’s blog. I love a cool garden structure! Go see the other four things she has in mind.
  • Nell Jean is at it again with a good list of projects planned. I like them all but I’m a big fan of the raingarden project.
  • Melody is focusing on her Japanese garden but has quite a few other plans as well. She’s also looking for a few planting suggestions!

13 thoughts on “5 New Things in the Garden”

  1. Wish I could say there was something new…other than snow!
    I'll come up with something for you, it will be an exercise in 'forward thinking'!
    I hope you'll join in on my sustainable living project, too…I have another post up announcing it, it has a give away attached, as well.

  4. That sunflower maze sounds like fun, but I'm sure you're aware of the large amount of bees they attract. I'd hate for your young-uns to get stung while playin in their maze. About that slope, why not make it all creeping phlox? I've seen hillsides of phlox that are absolutely stunning, I'm sure you have too.

  5. TC,

    You're right about the bees, I'll have to do some thinking on that. Creeping phlox would be very cool along the hillside but also very expensive. Phlox is easy to propagate but that would take some time. It's a good idea though!

  6. I made a sunflower house for my son when he was small – we didn't really have problems with bees by the way. It was square with the center empty for play & one small opening for the door. I grew zinnias among the sunflowers.

    Another year I staked fencing in an arch about 4 feet at the peak & grew cucumbers on it. Along the back I strung twine to grew morning glories & we made a stepping stone path through the garden to the front of the playhouse. The front was lined with marigolds & zinnias & the path went through different smaller vegetables like peppers & bush beans – I can't remember now what else. It was a much bigger hit than the sunflower house.

    My son's favorite thing was when we kept a corner of garden all in loose dirt for him to just dig.

    We also let an area of lawn grow one summer & kept paths mowed through it instead of lawn. We made a sort of maze with our paths – that was fun for everyone.

    No young kids at my house now so we don't do those things anymore.

  7. Hi Dave, the sunflower maze sounds perfect! I know what you mean about the girls, our litte LTB is much more independent too, but we still watch him closely as he plays on his own rather than being in the middle of whatever we are doing. As it should be. I am playing hookey for your latest assignment, but the magic post will be up Wednesday.

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