What are your garden plans for 2023?

I just retired and am looking forward to extending our growing season this year with my greenhouse that I built last year. Looking to learn and try new things. Been gardening for many years but learn something new all the time online at sites like this one. Best of all is learning how good fresh produce tastes!

D Man, I love your greenhouse!  Kinda makes me wish I hadn't used all the reclaimed concrete blocks as I see that wall being great at holding heat in the cooler months.  Is your floor concrete?  I'm considering trying to create something on a smaller scale inside my greenhouse (if I ever finish it) and try to overwinter some marginal plants.

Yes, it does have a concrete floor. It's a repurposed storage building. My property used to be a working farm. I bought the farmhouse and buildings, the developer sold the land around me. Not sure what it was originally used for but 3 sides are block which makes for great heat retention in the winter. This winter was a test and other than one hard cold spell (close to 5F) it's stayed pretty warm. Onions, garlic and some herbs have survived so far.

Garden plans for 2023! Great thread and lots of great plans from all of you! Wow!
Last year I cracked the code on growing tomatoes and peppers on this creek bottom zone 4 property.  It required a $200 10' x 26' poly tunnel.  Once I figured out that I could raise the whole thing's skirt all the way around, the tomatoes went nuts and the bees found everything.  I have flat leafed parsley and a beautiful rosemary plant that I transplanted from outside in fall to the greenhouse and they have lived through our -34 degree days.
Very little grew in my outside gardens last year. Potatoes were a bust so their giant pots will be moved inside the greenhouse.   Plans:

1. Insert hog panels into roof of greenhouse so water doesn't pond and stretch plastic.
2. Collect rain water from all buildings, not just house.
3. Plant malabar vining spinach inside greenhouse at every framing point to lattice up to hog panels (item#1) providing shade on the inside and not having to use tarps on the outside this year. I'll harvest more leaves if too dark. Gotta love an edible shade cloth.
4. Build a better wood shed.
5. Build air prune boxes for nut tree babies. Following Edible Acres' Sean's plans.
6. Remove last 2 sick elms. Replace with Butternut and Hazelnut trees, pear, apricot and way more honey berries.
7. Fluff and feed everything.  Increase plant numbers in medicinal garden.
8. Plant an entire property line with flowers for polinators.
9. Nurture my edible lawns.  
Have a wonderful year everyone!

This year, I hope to

1) use the deep-mulch/lasagna mulching method to build up new garden beds!

2) put up a new fence and use the Three Sisters method to grow corn along it.

3) Grow grapes for the first time!

4) finally grow a Rosemary plant that doesn't get knocked over or trampled by careless family members, haha

5) Do the "pomato" grafting thing to grow tomatoes and potatoes on the same plant!

6) Propagate a ton of mulberry & blackberry plants from local wild ones

7) Convert the yard to some sort of no-mow option

I am going to continue doing what has worked for me and tackle what needs to be improved.

1) fruit trees grown from seeds. Since 2020 I started growing fruit trees from seeds and they are so much faster and easier than I thought would be. The peach tree produced large juice fruits last year true to type. This year my pear and apple trees are going to bloom for the first time maybe I will get some fruits. I also planted black walnuts, hazelnuts, and pawpaw's. They are slow growers but all healthy looking. I am really encourage and adding black goji, seaberry and yuzu to my list.

2) veggie garden. I try out new varieties each year and keep what I like to eat. This year I want to get better at succession planting and vertical gardening to get the most out of the small garden space.

3) flower garden. I have been collecting wildflower seeds from the area and introducing them to my yard. I also bought quite a few seeds online but not all are suitable here. Whatever won't reseed get abandoned. Perennials and self seeding annuals need little care and I am turning more and more into a lazy gardener.

4) self sufficiency. Last year a bad batch of potting mix destroyed many of my seedlings and potted plants so I decided to make my own as much as possible. I bought Coco coir and used home made compost. It still needs some optimization but all of my indoor plants repotted are rejuvenated and growing vigorously.

5) feeding chickens. I am expanding the food sources for my chooks. They enjoy so many things besides conventional feeds: black walnut, goji, broom corn seeds, winter/ spring weeds etc. So I am growing more of these plants in the awkward corners to make the most out of the land.

6) soil improvement. Apart from the veggie, wildflower gardens and tree guilds, the rest of my yard is compacted subsoil with the organic matter level of 2%. The area is several times bigger and it is being mowed. I am trying a different way to improve the soil without outside resource or surface disturbance.

2023 is another year full of hope in gardening.

I want to add a front lawn roundish hugelkultur. And plant lots of winter squash. I have it out for the front lawn this year. I also want to add lots of wood chips.    

My garden plans will be scaled back quite a bit.  My husband has had some recent medical issues and will be down for at least a month and then in rehab after that, so it's just me for a while.  Concentrating on tasks that need completed now and getting the beds ready for growing.  Still hope to get quite a bit accomplished this year but it will be spread out over the season and what I don't get completed can wait until next year.

May Lotito wrote:4) self sufficiency. Last year a bad batch of potting mix destroyed many of my seedlings and potted plants so I decided to make my own as much as possible. I bought Coco coir and used home made compost. It still needs some optimization but all of my indoor plants repotted are rejuvenated and growing vigorously.

This was the potting soil mix used by the place I first learned to garden.  It's based on old English recipes.  1 part soil, 1 part compost or leaf mold, 1 part sharp sand or granite grit, 1 part vermiculite or perlite. Leaf mold is such a great amendment, I dedicated a compost bin to making the stuff.

I'm so glad you asked!
With a 25 sqm garden in built up inner Sydney; My aim is rehabilitation of the garden as a wildlife refuge island, plus container grown things that are small, fast, better fresh and lack all appeal to local inner-city rat populations (salad leaves, snow peas and the like).  

Both are going reasonably well; so this year I wan't to redo the garden layout to maximise the non-vermin fauna it can support (e.g. I don't want those rats back; but I'd love skinks, spiders, and bees to flourish).  

My working theory is that is a function of vegetatation volume and variety, so I spent the last couple of years de-weeding and working on improving the soil - which has gone well, but far too long thinking about how to optimise for plants that were aesthetically acceptable (to my husband, to the neighbours) ecologically positive (in this compromised setting) and sited for best possible solar and shade patterns.

I have many saplings that individually meet this requirement.

I'm thinking this is the year I should just plant them all in, and see what happens rather than procrastin-  optimising. ...?

An interesting challenge, Mary! Welcome.
I am also urban, also southern hemisphere, and also am always trying to balance the some-wildlife-but-not-others thing. For the moment the rats seem to be under control but the feral cats and mice are a whole nother ball game....

CristobalCristo, yeah, wildlife will probably win unless you have a fence and go after the gophers and voles.  And it isn't just deer.  Packrats and rabbits are often at fault when everyone is blaming deer.  

This is a lot, but it's made a real difference in my drought prone garden.

If you can, an 8 foot chicken wire fence on metal fence posts works, (2 layers of 3 foot wide chicken wire run horizontally,, laced together with galvanized wire) with that brightly colored construction string or the plastic rope that comes off of alfalfa bales (I get these free from a neighbor,) around the top.  Turn out the bottom 6 inches of the chicken wire and hold it down to the ground with rocks until grass can grow through it to hold it down.  If a rodent is gaining access you'll see a path through the grass.  Even dead grass can hold down the chicken wire.

And hugel trenches, buried wood/limbs/branches/sticks and organic matter, can't recommend these enough for holding water in the soil even when it's 100 F outside.  Top the trenches with 4"-5" of mowed weeds or wood chips (preferably), keep the sun off the soil, and you'll be amazed at how much it improves growing conditions.

I tried hugel mounds, but the voles and gophers got up into them and made wind tunnels, they dried out terribly, and the winter downpours slid the soil back off, so trenches are very much better.

Mulch, mulch, mulch....it will get better.

Deer can't jump wide, and don't want to get their feet caught on string, so if you can only do a 4 foot high fence (4 foot wide chicken wire run horizontally from post to post,)  put a second row of stakes 2 feet away from the chicken wire on the outside, and bright construction string around the top of the outer posts to make a line up at the 4 foot level, a faux fence of sorts, and they won't jump it.   It's kind of a lot of posts, but it is cheaper then 8 feet high chicken wire, and while you save for that upper half of chicken wire.

It's exhausting to go to bed at night willing plants to be there in the morning.  Been there, done that!

Find the ground water paths on your property by seeing how the trees/native plants grow in a line, even if it's before and after your property.   All that melting snow from the Sierras is running off the Sierras and under your property.  Satellite maps are good for this.  That's where you can tap into your underground water source for your garden trees and plants. Oak trees are a great source of water and planting between two of them, even if theya re 50 feet apart, will guarantee water for your trees and bushes.   Drought tolerant natives want to find water down below their roots. They will die if they are watered near their roots, especially in summer when most natives on the west coast are hibernating where there's little rain.  Mulch, mulch them thickly, just like in the native places they grow.

Currants are nice native bushes that don't have thorns and provide fruit, and want to tap into that ground water.  The elderberry might take a couple years to take off, and will need some extra water the first year.    I plant all new perennials by lining the bottom of the planting hole with fat sticks and small 2" branches that are soaked in water, cover that with manure, soak it so the manure water goes down below the hole, then fill back in around the roots with unamended soil.  Make those roots go down for nutrients and water.

Ravens eat snails, and little flocks of birds eat bugs, so encourage them in your garden by keeping dogs and cats out of your garden.  

The best gopher and vole deterrents around the roots of plants where the ground doesn't freeze are asparagus plants, day lillies, elephant garlic (the first big bulb is expensive, but it puts off so many little bulblets you'll have plenty in year 2 and thereafter, (even in dry soil,) narcissus bulbs, daffidil bulbs, rosemary plants.

Homemade gopher baskets out of 2 foot chicken wire bent in half and about 15 inches wide or more allow the roots of the plants some protection for at least a year, then the above plants will protect the roots.

I always plant some of these on either side of a perennial or fruit tree.  

Interesting to find this thread today when I've just come in from shoveling snow out of the chicken pen (again!!!) But I'm not complaining 4 feet on the ground in some places means we'll have plenty of water in the spring, anyway.

And I had a garden vision while shoveling. We're planning to make a new door on the chicken coop so that we can rotate the chicken's area into three different spaces. So my vision was to use hay and cardboard to make a lasagna-type top to the chicken area the girls and pudge (the rooster) have been occupying this winter and last fall. I hope that might make it possible to plant some crop right away. Now, I'll just need to think that through a bit before deciding on a crop. But I put A LOT of work into the fence in that area, so it might be a good place to grow things the woodchucks like.

I'm also hoping to establish some perrenial onions, trellis my hardy kiwi (if they survive this winter!), and take some cuttings from an elderberry bush.

There's more, but I not too good at making lists. Thanks for this interesting thread.

2023!

learn and practice doing things while gardening with newborn in carrier, and time things for when they can hang out in a pod while I’m nearby gardening
try to manage projects in naptime-scaled increments

Forage and propagate native plants from nearby plentiful zones to make my forest garden and Laneway to harmonize with local landscape:

Northern pitcher plant
Red elderberry
Fly honeysuckle
Various ferns
birch saplings
Beech saplings
Sugar maple saplings
Tamarack saplings
Meadow rue
Meadowsweet
Joe Pye weed
Find Wild leeks!

This year in the veg patch:

Fight back blackberries & bermuda grass against the pasture edge, and make more beds around the old apple tree. Continue building soil for season number 3 hold back on major heat plantings until last frost

Scale up from 120 garlic plants to 200 using crop in the ground now.

Try new calypso beans, king tut peas, cosmic carrot variety, black lentils, squash patch instead of pumpkins. Improve on seed gathering from the veg patch and trial kale/radishes from last year.

Try buckwheat cover crop directly after the garlic harvest and investigate any impact on honey.

Hopefully a Honey harvest! Last year and a half we’ve seen good health and growth of both hives.

Trees:

investigate peach orchard down the mountain and try the same variety up here. We add 1-2 fruit trees per year and I’ll be out of space soon

Plant linden sapling for pollinator/tea herbal.

Consider Seven Sons flowering tree on laneway for more late season pollen/nectar power and winter interest.

Build on fruit orchard guilds with more herb, bulbs, and comfry, elderberry, fly honeysuckle, ferns.

Happy springtime folks!