Easy Street Gardening
Weekly, step-by-step guidance for gardening on the front range.
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 2: 1/7/2024 - 1/13/2024
How things are going:
This week I’ve spent some time writing down my gardening goals for the year. I’m keeping track of these in a google spreadsheet that I will refer to throughout the season to remind myself what I wanted to get done.
At this point, I’m just in brainstorm mode, writing down all the things that I’d like to do. I don’t necessarily think I will do all of these. In the coming weeks, I will map out when I will tackle these goals and also prioritize them. Some of these goals will happen during late winter, such as getting better results from my seedlings, and others will happen later in the season, such as adopting a more strategic tomato pruning strategy.
Knowing when I will work on these goals helps me see more clearly how many of them I can realistically accomplish. Ten or twelve goals, spread out over the year, become much more manageable than trying to do them all at once.
But that planning work is for later this month. Right now, I’m just enjoying thinking about what went wrong and what went well last year, and dreaming up what is going to make this year the best year yet!
While I’ve been setting these goals, the plants in my two covered beds have been subjected to some really cold weather, and it is only going to get colder. I’m curious to see how those little lettuces and sprouted garlic fair during these cold snaps. I have noted that the soil in my third, uncovered bed has not frozen, which is encouraging that roots of my winter crops are at the very least surviving. As soon as we have a few warm days in a row, I’ll open up the beds to check on how the plants are doing and share an update.
What to do this week:
Hopefully you have created a space for yourself to track your garden plans and results for the year - a notebook, spreadsheet, clipboard with a few sheets of paper. Having this space will help you stay organized, which is really helpful for staying on top of your garden tasks. Seeing how the work can be spread out over many weeks and months reduces the demand on your time on any given day, and you’ll avoid feeling like you’ve fallen behind or overwhelmed.
Here’s what to do:
Start translating your gardening resolutions into more concrete goals. Write these down in your garden planner. I encourage you to make a long list, and try to be comprehensive.
What do you want your experience gardening to look like each month of the season?
What do you want your gardening process to look like?
Think about your garden infrastructure, the plants you’d like to grow, any troubles you’d like to address, and new things you’d like to try.
Share some of your goals in the comment section! I’d be interested to learn what you all are thinking about for the coming season.
Next week:
Refining our goals into an action plant
Resources:
Resource 1
I thought this was a funny and interesting take on how to apply project management to gardening. While you definitely don’t have to plan this extensively, having some goals and a strategy for achieving them really helps ensure that this multi-month project goes well.