It seems like most of the garden blogs I read have been doing some type of New Year’s Resolutions, and so I’m going to jump on the bandwagon a few days late. This is a mixture of goals and plans for the blog and the garden. (The garden goals are going to be very general, since we aren’t having our first planning meeting until Jan. 17th!)

1. Have raised beds to plant in – hopefully early enough in the season to be reasonable!

2. Post more vegetable and herb recipes on the blog again. Last year I got away from posting many recipes (probably because there weren’t a lot of vegetables for a chunk of the summer). I’m planning to feature more yummy veggie recipes on the blog.

3. Grow some good tomatoes. Okay, this is probably more dependent on the weather than anything I can do.

4. Do a better job of staying on top of insect and disease problems as they occur – both for blogging purposes and enacting solutions.

5. Do more vertical gardening. We had a pretty successful year with the trellises, and I hope we’re going to try some new things again this year.

6. Think about water conservation – and maybe do something about it too. While conditions aren’t as dry as they were in the fall, we are still in a drought without many signs of it letting up. As we get a new irrigation system in place, I hope we can make it as efficient as possible. Many vegetables have a better flavor with a little bit of deficit irrigation (getting a bit less water than they strictly need), so maybe we can practice a bit more tough love.

7. Get a rain barrel. We’ve been talking about getting a rain barrel put in the Quiet Garden area, and maybe we’ll get that done as part of the renovation. We wouldn’t be using it for the vegetables, but it could be used for flowers and containers.

8. Explore Italian vegetables. Maybe this will happen this year or maybe next year. I have been salivating over the new Seeds from Italy catalog, and dreaming up ways to make fennel, radicchio, cardoon, and other fun things grow in Kansas.

What are you garden plans for the new year?