Your 2024 Garden

[rosemarythyme]

Never really had anything bitter that I can think of. Spinach is probably the most bitter

Yeah you might find it a bit of a face puncher. Maybe try buying a small radicchio and see how you tolerate that - I enjoy it as a Caesar salad, or roasted with pancetta, shallots and balsamic? Or dandelion greens... Or super dark chocolate (90% or higher).

 

[fuzzi]

I worked on two of the new raised beds today.

My leaf pile, a source of goodness!

I take off the top 2" of dry leaves to get the stuff that's beginning to decompose.

Here I added wood to the beds:

Then I topped them off with a mixture of wet and partially rotted leaves and yard waste

They'll settle some, but I will be adding compost, dirt, and some peat moss before planting in April.

I also did some digging to level the ground. There was a raised bed garden here years ago, and the beds were still elevated.

See my lovely clay/sand soil?

Hardly made a dent in the pile!

The other raised beds will be set up soon.

 

[gtaus]

...my family always had a big pot of bitter melon soup at family gatherings, but I've never liked it, as a child or an adult.

That's sounds like too much bitter melon for me, too. However, Dear Wife made some vegetable soup and added little bits of bitter melon into the soup mix. I found that it was a nice accent to the soup and not overpowering at all. I don't think I would enjoy a bitter melon soup with bitter melon as the main ingredient.

I do like kale, broccoli and brussels sprouts and they are considered bitter foods.

There are many varieties of bitter melon. We only grew one kind last year and I don't even know what kind it was. Dear Wife got her plant starts from a friend who got them from a friend.... I think there might be a difference in bitterness in the different varieties just like in hotness in peppers.

At any rate, Dear Wife loved the bitter melon we grew this year, so we kept a lot of seeds for next year to grow the same stuff.

 

[gtaus]

I worked on two of the new raised beds today...

Great pictures. Love using leaf mold compost for my stuff as well. Most of my chicken run composting system, by bulk, is probably leaves. I don't think you can wrong with using those leaves as the basis for your composting.

Fun fact: "Pound for pound, the leaves of most trees contain twice as many minerals as manure."

Follow the above link for the full article...

 

[castillo_de_luz]

Me? Planning my 2024 garden? How kind of you to ask...
I use the Farmer's Almanac garden planning tool, and while it's not perfect, it does what I need -- provides zone-specific planting and harvesting times too, which is nice.

The big U-shape with the veggies in it is actually a large raised bed with full deer fencing and a door/gate at the open end (I'm just too lazy to put it in the design). It also has tubing for automatic irrigation. The outer herb garden will be a brand new short raised bed that's divided so the mint won't choke out everything around it. We'll see if the line of marigolds will actually take with direct planting -- soil around here is more sand than anything else.

I don't have a diagram yet, but I'm planning to turn my entire front yard -- about half an acre -- into a new wildflower field. This will be year 1 of probably 3-5 to begin establishing it, but it'll be a fun project that does't require significant maintenance.

 

[castillo_de_luz]

I worked on two of the new raised beds today.

Raised beds for the win, when our native isn't the greatest! I'll fill mine in the early spring, same method as you -- love using leaves and bracken to help fill and have a little interior compost happening.

What do you plan to sow?

 

[Iluveggers]

You all I can’t even believe it! I have my seeds circled in the Baker Creek and Seed Savers Exchange catalogs to order right after Christmas. I need to do a quick seed inventory but I’ve been busy baking and getting things ready for the holiday. I walked into a Dollar Tree, looking for plain candy canes to crush and add on top my brownies (went to 2 stores before that and none to be found). Well, I know why that was the plan for me…I turned down the aisle and there was a brand new huge display of seeds, all marked 4/$1! 25 cents a pack! I usually buy heirloom organic, but that was too good to pass up, and many of them were heirloom varieties anyways. So I bought 30 seed packs for $7.50. Amazing. I feel so blessed. I think they will become stocking stuffers for myself on Monday. lol.

 

[fuzzi]

I worked on two of the new raised beds today.

My leaf pile, a source of goodness!
View attachment 3711084
I take off the top 2" of dry leaves to get the stuff that's beginning to decompose.

Here I added wood to the beds:
View attachment 3711091
View attachment 3711085
Then I topped them off with a mixture of wet and partially rotted leaves and yard waste

View attachment 3711086
They'll settle some, but I will be adding compost, dirt, and some peat moss before planting in April.

I also did some digging to level the ground. There was a raised bed garden here years ago, and the beds were still elevated.
View attachment 3711095
See my lovely clay/sand soil?

View attachment 3711101
Hardly made a dent in the pile!

The other raised beds will be set up soon.

About 15 years ago:

We let it go to weeds:

Then trees...

18 months ago I paid someone with a chainsaw to cut down the trees. Then we covered it with old carpeting to smother new growth.

Now I'm digging out stumps or cutting them flush with the soil.

A lot of work today because we neglected it for years.

 

[fuzzi]

Raised beds for the win, when our native isn't the greatest! I'll fill mine in the early spring, same method as you -- love using leaves and bracken to help fill and have a little interior compost happening.

What do you plan to sow?

Looking forward to seeing YOUR raised beds.

I'm planning on the usual, just rotating them to the new beds: tomatoes, Summer squash, cantaloupes, watermelons, green and wax beans.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

That's sounds like too much bitter melon for me, too. However, Dear Wife made some vegetable soup and added little bits of bitter melon into the soup mix. I found that it was a nice accent to the soup and not overpowering at all. I don't think I would enjoy a bitter melon soup with bitter melon as the main ingredient.

I do like kale, broccoli and brussels sprouts and they are considered bitter foods.

There are many varieties of bitter melon. We only grew one kind last year and I don't even know what kind it was. Dear Wife got her plant starts from a friend who got them from a friend.... I think there might be a difference in bitterness in the different varieties just like in hotness in peppers.

At any rate, Dear Wife loved the bitter melon we grew this year, so we kept a lot of seeds for next year to grow the same stuff.

According to Baker Creek, their 8 or 9 varieties all seem to have small differences flavorwise. I picked out a few to try, I figure worst case scenario, they either don't grow or I don't like them enough to repeat growing.