Each week, this newsletter will contain three sections:
How things are going
I will share an update on my garden as a point of reference for how my weekly tasks are adding up and looking.
What to do this week
Here I will present the 3 - 5 things I am planning or doing this week.
Resources
A deeper dive into information and perspectives that are inspiring or informing my gardening.
If you are coming to this newsletter mid-season, please take a look at the posts from the past few weeks to get a sense of context for where we are at this week!
Week 1: 1/1/2024 - 1/6/2024
Before we dive into planning for 2024, I want to hear from you!
Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey about your own experience gardening, so I can make this newsletter as helpful as possible.
How things are going:
Happy New Year! If you followed along in 2023, welcome back, I’m glad you’re here and find this newsletter helpful. If you’re just joining, welcome!
I’m looking forward to publishing this weekly guide again in 2024. Writing down what I am thinking about and doing each week of the year related to my garden has helped me become a more intentional and systematic gardener, and sharing these weekly tips with you all has pushed me to more clearly articulate for myself the reasons behind the decisions I am making, so thank you for that.
As I write this post, I am looking out at my garden beds, which occupy the space between the sidewalk and the street in front of my house. Two beds are covered with greenhouse plastic laid over hoops. The third is bare (my cover crop didn’t sprout). Garlic and lettuce are hibernating in the plastic covered beds, in an experiment to have earlier harvests in the spring. Looking out on the beds, I’m thinking about both what gardening goals I have for the coming year.
Over the next few weeks, I am going to set aside some time to write down my gardening goals for 2024. I write my goals in a Notion page, and I track my progress against them using Google Sheets. Having these tools, and making weekly updates, helps me to prioritize gardening and stay on track.
I am also writing down what kinds of things I’ll need to do each month to have a successful season. While I don’t have my goals clearly defined yet, I have a strong sense of buckets of tasks I’ll need to do each month no matter what my goals are.
Gardening may not seem like a year round activity, but I like to approach big projects by spreading work throughout the year to make it more manageable. Doing this allows me to only have to spend a few hours a week (if that) preparing, planting, maintaining, harvesting, and processing my garden. This is my current thinking about how the year will look:
So, as you follow along this newsletter, these are broadly the categories of tasks I’ll be writing about each week during the passing months. As I finalize my goals in the next week or so, I may modify this map by adding to it, but I don’t think anything will be removed.
That’s where I am at with starting off 2024. I already am starting to notice the days getting longer, seed catalogs just arrived in the mail, and that’s making me excited about the coming season. I hope in the coming weeks that your own goal setting will get you excited and energized too about your own gardening ventures this year.
What to do this week:
Here’s what to do:
Create a space for yourself to track your gardening goals for the year. Dedicate a notebook or a digital document to your 2024 garden. We will return to this planning space throughout the year, so keep it handy.
Now is the time! Make some gardening resolutions for yourself, and write them down.
Do you want to add to your gardening space?
Grow more food this season than you did last?
Start your own seedlings, rather than buying starts from the store?
Grow a wider variety?
Add new features to your garden, like a trellis or drip irrigation?
Or maybe, you’re just getting started and you want to learn and have some fun.
If you haven’t yet, please fill out this survey, so I can learn a little bit about you and your gardening practices and needs. This will help me make this newsletter even more useful!
Next week:
Talking about gardening goals and setting expectations for ourselves
Resources:
Resource 1
My newsletter is all about trying to help you think systematically about gardening. I am finding some inspiration in James Clears’ writing on goals and systems this new year, and I thought you might too.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.”
Let’s build some gardening systems together this year!