New Years' Resolutions for Gardeners

Resolve to Grow a Better Garden in the New Year

New Years' resolutions can help you grow your garden to the next tier of greenery. For the budding gardener, these can include promises to spend more time with the plants, and for a seasoned garden guru, resolutions may include more advanced techniques or more specialized varieties of plants that help give them better insight into the world of gardening. Explore some possible New Years' resolutions for gardeners of all types.

Grow heirloom vegetables

Quirky heirloom vegetables like those at the Farmer's Market not only taste better than store-bought vegetables, they also have more nutrients.

Improve water conservation

Using conservative watering practices helps save water, which can save you money as well as benefit the environment. Soil composition as well as watering techniques can help shave gallons off your garden water use.

Test your soil
Outdoor gardeners rely heavily on their available ground soil for growing. Testing the soil that naturally occurs in an environment can tell a gardener what to add to make it the perfect soil mixture for their garden plants. Most plants prefer loamy soil, which is a relatively even balance of sand, silt and clay which gives a garden the nutrients, drainage and moisture retention plants need to survive. A soil test can also help identify potential problems like pollutants in the soil which need to be treated or removed before planting a garden for food.

Use organic garden elements

Keeping it organic can help keep food free of unnatural chemicals and pesticides and can offer a useful way to get rid of unwanted trash. Proper composting, done carefully to avoid pathogens, can yield a rich source of safe organic nutrients for your growing garden.

Control garden pests safely

Using manual or safe methods of controlling garden pests can help reduce the chemicals in your food and environment. Hand pick visible pests like parasitic plant eating worms and use safer soap to spray for more widespread infestations of pests. Avoid poisons, as they can cause damage to the plant, the soil and your health.

Spend time in the garden daily

Daily meditative time in the garden can help ease the soul and offer the gardener a useful chance to notice small changes in the garden. Carefully observing plants without smothering them with care can give a gardener a closer relationship with the garden plants, which can help the gardener learn to care for the plants better in subtle ways and give the gardener the ability to notice changes in the plant that could indicate a deficiency or problem in the plant's environment.