What are you planning to grow next year?

General Discussions
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There are so many species I want to try next year! Everything I’m getting from the community grexes, of course (grin), plus about eight million cucurbit varieties that appeal to me. (Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating – it’s probably only about seven million.)

I’m planning to way, way, way oversow on purpose, with the assumption that most plants will die. I’m not going to baby them. I’m going to be seeing what can grow in deep mulch with no irrigation in a desert. I expect vast casualities. If I get even a 1% survival rate, I’ll be delighted, and those seeds will get treated in the same way next year.

My planting plan for next year is loosely something like this:

Early January:
Lots of dormant perennials, such as fruit trees.

February:
Loads of peas, brassicas, and carrots.

Early March:
Loads of tomato and cucurbit seeds I can afford to lose, just in case any of them are way more cold hardy than normal. I tried last year and it didn’t work, but I’m still going to try every year, because it would be awesome to have a population that can handle being sown outside after the ground thaws and well before the last frost date.

Late March:
However many bean seeds I can afford to lose. It seems likely they’ll all die, but you never know – three of the lima beans I planted in early March last year shrugged off frost after frost and gave me delicious beans. They continued to do well in shade with no water, shrugged off frost after frost in October, and only died with the first hard freeze in November. I obviously saved half of those for seed.

Mid April:
More tomatoes, beans, and cucurbits I can afford to lose, these ones from my favorite varieties so far. My average last frost date is April 15th. Last year, the actual last frost we had was May 15th, arrrrrrrrrgh. I want to plant in early April, thanks very much, since that’s when most of our rain is, so I’m going to see how much I can push the population towards frost tolerance.

Mid May:
After all risk of frost has passed (I sure hope), I’ll direct sow all the warm weather crops I care most about. This includes crops I have very few seeds for, such as bananas, as well as my most promising varieties of tomatoes, beans, and cucurbits.

June through August:
I’ll keep succession sowing warm weather crops whenever I see an empty space.

Early September through late October:
Starting cool weather crops that I want to have overwinter. This will probably mostly be brassicas and winter peas, but I may have loads of other things I want to plant by then, too. I know you’re “supposed” to plant those in July or so, but they just plain won’t germinate at that time for me. It’s too hot. We don’t start getting temperatures below 90 degrees until late September.

November and December:
Seeds for perennials that need cold stratification, such as fruit bushes and trees.

1 Like
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I would like to grow:

  • potatoes - tetraploids and diploids
  • tomatoes - with any luck a rather wild bunch!
  • shungiku (edible chrysanthemum) - I have 4 kinds
  • daikon (kind of big Asian radish) - I have 9 kinds
  • brassica rapa - I have about 20 varieties though I may not mix them all.
  • cucumber - I have 9 Japanese varieties
  • rice - a few varieties
  • soy beans - I have a few from Japan and am trying to work out which ones in Europe I might add

Those are what I want to focus on. I do have some others I would love to grow but I had better not think too much about growing them before I manage to tend to those above as the higher priority. And I guess I will prioritise crossing over eating, so even if I could only grow a small quantity of some other things, and not even get enough to eat them, that would be really nice if I could at least get some crosses going for the sake of the following year.

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By spring I hope to have both a woodchip garden and a secondary inground garden ready to go. Woodchips primarily plants that I start inside. Tomatoes, peppers, and so on. On the edges I’ll do the stuff that usually gets planted in the ground, like squashes, melons, and beans.

The secondary garden will be specific for drought and cold tolerance testing, probably teparies and other things I already know are drought tolerant.

This is my first year here. By next year I hope the woodchip garden will be broken down enough that I can direct sow into it.

I’ll be doing fruit trees from seed and starting the wild garden. Garlic, onions, black solanum, various grains, greens, flax and brassicas. Then later in the season I’ll theoretically plant into the mat of dead ephemerals. We’ll see how that works. That second planting will be amaranth, chia, and so on, with sweet potatoes at the base. All that will break down and reseed itself for the following year, except the sweet potatoes, which will rot overwinter and help my soil, as well as smothering the grass.

I have started grape seeds, but they’ll still be tiny so their boxes will be for root crops. Turnips and beets, primarily. Maybe potatoes.

Next year I’ll have a better idea of pests, soil and weather so I’ll be better able to plan.

4

That sounds like a delicious garden!

5

What ive done so far:

  1. planted some cold hardy perennials like hablitzia and sorrel, and hardy cover crops of red clover and field peas.

  2. a few successions of greens, radishes, turnips direct sown. Experimental direct seeding if onions, beets, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, and brussel sprouts interspersed to push the limits of exposure to cold. Planted snow peas along some wire fences.

  3. test planting of sunflowers and squash to push the limits of cold exposure. Some were planted in existing fertilized beds of garlic and tulips. Figured i could use the space and experiment at the same time. Some i scraped the topsoil off and planted in experimental places around the yard.

  4. Successions of beets, onions, carrots, brassicas

I will be doing in the future:
5) after danger of frost has passed, ill be doing mass plantings of flour corn, squash, melons, beans, cucumbers, flowers everywhere i think i can fit a seed. I am most nervous of corn, mainly because of the wildlife predation, but i figure if i plant enough i will get at least something alive. And i hope to perhaps figure out areas to plant or traits to favor that will be more succesful in the future. Squash and beans will definitely be successful in some amounts. Melons and watermelons may be a little risky but i hope they should do fine.

  1. tree seedlings planted outside. Mostly apple, but some cherry, and some random other types i purchased from EFN.

  2. fall sown radishes and turnips, with more greens mixed in

  3. if i have seeds left over, i will do trials of brassicas and root veggies late sown for overwintering inspired by some projects i have read about on here! Theres so many ways to experiment that even though i bought so many seeds this year, i still think i will probably run out.

I cannot wait to start seeing results, one way or the other!!

6

That sounds delightful. I think it’s very clever to use a bed that’s already got stuff in it in order to experiment. Great use of space that way.