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Video Summary
In this video, I share my complete garden plan for 2023. I’m in zone 5B and it’s early April, so I’ve started seeds indoors but haven’t transplanted anything outside yet. I walk you through my PowerPoint garden layout (created to scale with a grid system), show you all the seeds I’ve started under grow lights, and give you a tour of my outdoor garden space as it looks right now.
This year I’m trying several new crops including tomatillos, bok choy, turnips, rutabaga, cantaloupe, leeks, kohlrabi, and several new pepper varieties. I’m also working on establishing perennial fruits like asparagus (second year), pear trees, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. My main goals are to grow enough green beans to can and to successfully harvest sugar pie pumpkins.
I share my setup which includes raised beds (3×8 feet) along one side and direct ground planting in rocky soil on the other side. I discuss my successes and failures from previous years and explain what I’m doing differently this season to improve my results.
Video Transcript
Hey everyone, it’s Kari from Keep It Simple DIY, and today I want to show you my garden plan for 2023. It’s early April here and I am in zone 5B, and so I have some seeds that I’ve already started and I’ve done a little bit of work to prep the garden, but I haven’t put anything outside yet. So today what I want to do is I want to show you my garden plan, which you can see on the screen behind me. I also want to show you which seeds I’ve started, and I want to show you what the garden looks like as of right now. So come along, I’m going to show you the screen.
All right, here is my garden plan for 2023. The way that I made this is this is just a PowerPoint presentation. What I’ve done is I’ve gone through and made a grid of each of these sections of my garden, and everything in here is to scale. And I have then taken pictures of each type of fruit or vegetable and put it where I want to put it in the garden.
So let’s start by looking down at this section here. This section actually in reality comes below here, but it just fit here better on the PowerPoint. So I am planning on doing some tomatillos. I haven’t ever grown tomatillos before, so this will be a learning experience. And then some tomatoes. Now I’ve had all of these be tomatoes in the past, all five of them, and it gives a lot of tomatoes. I’ve started quite a bit of tomatoes and I have more than five at the moment, so I might be figuring out where to put some tomatoes come transplant time. I also have some corn here. I might or might not plant the corn. I’ve had, you know, good and bad luck with corn depending on the year and where I place it, so we’ll see on that. I think this might just be not a lot of corn here, or maybe just those two to have, you know, a day or two of fresh corn.
So over here along this side, I actually have raised beds, and I’m planning on doing some peas in the main part of this bed. And then I’m going to do radishes, bok choy. I haven’t done those before, so just in a small part of the bed. This next bed, I’m hoping and planning to have it be all green beans this year. I want to get enough green beans to can, and I haven’t gotten that many before. Next up we have carrots, and then I’m going to try some turnips, some rutabaga. We’ll see how that goes. And then up here I’ve got asparagus, which I planted last year, so this will be the second year. Typically you can’t harvest asparagus until about the third year, so we’ll see how that does. I might throw a butternut squash up in there. Just I think I’ll have a little bit of room. And then an artichoke. Now I had actually planted an artichoke plant in that spot before I put the raised beds in, and putting the raised beds in, it just didn’t survive even with trying to transplant it. So I planted one last year and it didn’t come up, so we’ll see if it comes back. They are perennials, so hopefully it’ll come back, but if not I might try planting it again.
Now from here all the way down to here, there’s no raised beds. It’s just rocks and everything’s planted directly in the ground. This year I plan to add a few boxes kind of like these ones throughout, just to give myself, you know, a good square foot of decent soil. But right here I typically put pumpkins. I did sugar pie pumpkins for the first time last year, and I did them a little bit too late in the season, so I only got two. I’m hoping to get a little bit more and possibly be able to can some cut up pumpkin. Right here is a hibiscus plant that’s already planted. It’s been coming back year after year. And then here I have two grape bushes, and they’ve been there for about five years now. I am working on trying to get them trained to go where I want them to go. But underneath both of them there is actually a planter spot because when I planted them they were really tiny and there was room between them. So I think I’m going to try to plant some cantaloupe and watermelon in underneath the grapes. And watermelon I have successfully grown before, but cantaloupe I haven’t.
Next up I have blueberries. I’ve got some blueberries here and down here. These were planted last year. I did buy some soil acidifier to hopefully bring them back. I’ve tried to grow blueberries probably three or four times, and I just haven’t gotten them to be able to come back year after year because the soil out here just isn’t the best for them.
Next up I have raspberries. This first raspberry is just regular raspberry canes. Those grew really well last year, and so I’m hoping this year I’ll have a lot of fruit on the canes that grew last year. And that’s a dwarf raspberry bush rather than raspberry canes. I planted one of those at my previous home and I loved it. It came back great every year. It took me a few years to find it again once I moved into this home, so once I did I bought one and I put it in.
Next up is blackberries. On this fruit side, if you could tell, this is more of my fruit side and this is more of my vegetable side. Blackberries are actually in the mail. They should be here within a week or so, and I will transplant them outside. This won’t be the first time transplanting blackberries there, but hopefully this year they will stay alive for me.
Of course, another hibiscus plant there that actually was a transplant. I originally had three hibiscus. I had one here, one here, and one there. And the two here both died and this one stayed alive. And then last year, after, you know, two, three years of these not being alive, I ended up having a lot of volunteer hibiscus in this area, so I transplanted some. We’ll see if it comes back. A few of them died already that I had transplanted, so that’s the only lone survivor that could possibly come back.
Now this bed here is a smaller bed, and previously I had strawberries in there. And I would get strawberries, but they would all be eaten by roly-polies. And so I took the strawberries out of there, and I am going to try having that be an onion bed this year. So I want to do green onions. I’m going to try leeks. Leeks aren’t supposed to be able to grow in my zone, so we’ll see how that goes. And then a variety of bulb onions.
This section here, I do have a little bit of flower section in the middle. In this section I’m going to do more of the squashes. I’m not sure exactly which ones I’ll put in there, but most likely I will at least do the yellow squash because we love to eat that in our curry. Down here I have celery and spinach, and I plan to rotate those throughout the season, which ones in. And right below, I do plan on planting some potatoes. Last year I planted half of this bed and all of this bed in potatoes, and for just us two and not eating potatoes often, that was way too many potatoes. I still have so many.
And then this next section over here, this is just where I’m going to try a ton of things that I’ve never tried before. And so I’m just going to do a little quantity of each of them, kind of like what I’m doing over here.
Now you’ll see I have a random pear right here in the middle of the screen. That is a pear tree that has been in the ground for six years now, and it’s pretty large. We’ve had two years where some pears have grown, which is interesting because pear trees are supposed to need another pear tree in order to cross pollinate. So I’m kind of interested to know why sometimes it pollinates, sometimes it doesn’t. But what I’ve done is I’ve bought another pear tree and it’s right here. And then I have a peach and a plum tree. We’ll see if those actually come back. I bought them as bare root plants last year, and some of them I don’t think survived.
All right, let me take you over to the seeds and show you what we’ve planted so far.
All right, here are all the seeds that I’ve started. I know these lights look a little flickering to you, but I wanted to leave them on for the plants. All right, let’s get started. I’m going to show you what I’ve got. Don’t eat that, Milo.
All right, this here is some carrots. Now I know carrots are not a transplant crop, but the first year that we lived here we actually moved in, let’s see, June 8th. But we moved in and the garden wasn’t put in yet, and I knew that I wanted to have a garden. So I started my garden in pots around Mother’s Day, and I brought those pots with me from our last house to this house. And in those pots were carrots, and I put them in the ground and they actually transplanted fantastic and I got a ton of carrots that year. So I’m trying just a few indoors to see if I can jump start it, and then I’ll put a lot more outside.
All right, let me show you what we have going on here. All right, we’ve got some cantaloupe. There’s two in here, seeds that germinated. I’ve got some serrano peppers, and then this one here are jalapeños. I’ve got a watermelon started, and then cauliflower. And you know, I realized I didn’t have cauliflower on my planner guide, so I’ll see where I want to add that in. And then these ones are pimento peppers, and then Cow Wonder peppers back here.
All right, so I’ve got a lot of peas. This pea variety on the left, let’s see, sugar snap peas. I have never grown these before, and honestly I didn’t read the packet very well. I typically do bush peas rather than vining or just like smaller ones, and these are vining. So I’m going to need to figure out a trellis situation and get these… Gosh, I don’t even know what to do with them in the meantime because they’re just getting so long. So we’ll see. I’m going to think on that. If you guys have ideas, let me know. But next I have the Tom Thumb pea. I’ve grown these many times before and they’re just smaller. Hey, please don’t eat my peas.
All right, let’s see. Next I’ve got kohlrabi. It looks like I only have a few that have sprouted. I’ve never grown kohlrabi before, so we’ll see how that goes. And then I have two different kinds of spinach that I’m starting. They’re doing all right. I would like them to get a little bit more strong.
All right, this next section, I’ve got tomatillo started here, and I just have the tiniest little sprout. I put these in, oh gosh, what I love them. Anyways, I put these in probably a month or two ago, and I only have that one sprout. I’ve also added additional seeds to this one, and I have nothing sprouting yet, so we’ll see how that goes.
I did start onions in this one, this one, and this one. And I ran into a little bit of a problem, and the problem is that some of these pots, the drainage was blocked up a little bit. So I definitely need to use pots with better drainage, and I bought some, but I haven’t moved them yet or put new in. And then this mess is the leeks, so that might not end up working out. I’ll have to thin it a lot. Oh, Loli, get down.
I am trying to start an indoor herb garden this year, and so I have Thai basil and Italian basil that has already sprouted. The rest of the herbs I have down here, they haven’t sprouted yet. And then over here I do have five different varieties of tomatoes. I have two Money Maker tomatoes, one Genovese, two Porter tomatoes, let’s see, two… I forgot what they were, but they’re the ones that come out really pink. And then three what I call home tomatoes because I saved the seeds before I started labeling what they were. And I’m hoping out of those that there’s a cherry tomato out of one of them, so we’ll see.
This next tray down just has a variety of flowers. I actually had an unfortunate incident where all my flower seed packets got wet. It’s fine, they’re the ones that come in the mail for free anyways. But I transplanted out the seeds that I could save, and we’ll see what survives. They’ve been wet and slimy for a while before I planted them, so last ditch effort, see what I can keep going.
I have some potatoes here. These are potatoes from last year’s garden, and I took them out of their cold dark place to get them to sprout so I can plant them come the end of April, and they’re doing just that. I have two different varieties here. I have, I think, russets and, what is this? I’m not sure what this one is, but I’m hoping to have white. And then I think these are a light purple potato. Last year I grew dark purple potatoes also, and I just don’t use them all that much, and so going for lighter this year.
All right, I’m hoping to get these herbs to sprout. I’ve got cilantro, Italian oregano, chives, parsley, and celery, which celery is not an herb, but I thought I’d try to start them. And then I do have blackberries here. These are seeds that I bought a few years ago and they never germinated at all, but I figured since I was buying blackberries for the yard, I might as well try starting some too, just in case. I’m not expecting anything to happen with this, but the rest of these I hope will sprout soon. They’ve been in here for a few weeks now.
All right, let me get this closed up and I’ll take you outside.
All right, I’m outside. It is 30 degrees, but the sun’s actually shining, so it feels a lot better than that. And right here, these are the five buckets that I’m going to have possibly corn and tomatillos and tomatoes in. Here’s a view of these first four beds. These beds are three feet by eight feet, and then this back one, this is where the asparagus is, and this one is a little bit smaller just because that’s how much room there was.
All right, over here is where I plan to put the pumpkins, and this is my hibiscus plant. Here’s my grape vines, and they definitely need to be pruned, but you’re not supposed to prune them until there isn’t a risk of going below 18 degrees. And it’s very possible we might still go below 18 degrees here later this month, so I’m holding off on that. But you know, I did get this hibiscus pruned down, and I did get some more compost in these beds. Here’s one of these little extra spots, and then the other’s right here that I plan to put watermelon and cantaloupe in. And then there’s my little blueberry plant. We’ll see if it comes back. And you’ll see there is still some snow out here. And then these are my raspberry canes and the raspberry bush, planning on putting blackberries here and then also down here. This is my other hibiscus plant that we’ll see if it comes back, and the other blueberries. And then here’s where I want to put the onions. And here’s what these four beds look like. So potatoes will go probably in that back one there, and then we’ll fill out the rest. And I’ll add some more flowers here. These are calla lilies and they’re a light orangey pink color. I had some yellow ones out here that I transplanted to the front yard, so it’s totally possible that we’ll end up with some yellow there as well.
And let me just show you these three little trees that I planted as bare root. And there’s the pear tree and the pear tree. None of these are back yet. We’re still, you know, in freezing temperatures, so pretty soon everything will come out of dormancy.
All right, that is it for today’s video. If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up, and I want to say thank you so much for spending time with me today. I will see you next time. Bye-bye.
