Planning Time in the Urban Garden

Planting time behind me, planning time has begun!

Spring 2023 was the first year I had my soil tested and put raised rows in my front yard, with fishing line deer fencing around them. (My only yard sunlight is mercifully in Zone 1, literally right in front of the porch steps, and that has been super for so many reasons, just as all Permaculture books say!) My efforts succeeded, and we got lettuce, cucumbers, watermelons, a pumpkin, a cantaloupe, some ornamental corn (and the deer didn't, hahahahaha!)-- but I found myself surprisingly "limited by my imagination". The garden was a great small start,  more successful than what I had done in previous years with failed straw bales or merely pots. I was happy, but also melancholy: there could have been so much more, if I had planned and planted more, and I intend to next year.

As an aspiring Permaculturist and systems thinker, I want to do my 2024 garden planning in the context of the whole system of my lifestyle. But "my whole life" is such a big thing to brainstorm, I am not even sure exactly where to start. So far I have made a list of all the foods that we eat the most, most of which I cannot grow myself, such as pepperoni, but it was a helpful list to identify our recent eating patterns. (Currently I am reading "5 Acres and a Dream" which is a wonderful perspective on this type of thing, and will help focus my thinking on this a lot more!) But there is more to my life than food, and I would like to include it all in my planning for next year.

How do you approach your garden planning for the next year in the context of holistic lifestyle planning?

I like using herbs so at one point in my life I had a spot picked out for my medicinal garden.

I can't remember what happened with that idea, probably a drought.

Usually in February and March, I do my planning for the spring garden.

I am glad you are liking "5 Acres and a Dream":

https://permies.com/wiki/133426/Acres-Dream-Book-Leigh-Tate

She has also written a sequel:

https://permies.com/t/168155/Acres-Dream-Sequel-Leigh-Tate

Source

I ordered this book in my recent big book order--this is going to get me started!