Planning My 2024 Food Garden

Let’s crush our 2023 numbers!

If you’ve been following my home gardener/software developer journey over the past year or so, you may recall my self-imposed challenge from last year. I wanted to see how much money my food garden could save me by offsetting my grocery costs over the growing season.

Thanks to the helpful harvest logging features of my web app plannt.ca, I tracked over 102 pounds of food, harvested from crops grown using 102 square feet of my back yard, over the course of my 128-day growing season. This food saved my household over $400 in grocery expenses. Check out this blog post to see the detailed breakdown.

This year, I want to do it again. But better.

This is where v2 of my food garden planning platform plannt.ca comes in. For the past 2+ years, I’ve been working on this food garden planning web app- adding features, patching bugs, and generally getting to know the needs of the typical home food grower. It has come a very long way since its launch, and I’m personally very excited to see what it can do for me this year.

Enough background information. Here’s what my garden plan looks like for the 2024 growing season:

(The empty garden bed in the top left has already been taken over by perennial plants)

This is what it looks like, right now, in real life:

Here’s my muddy back yard, as is typical for Spring time in Canada.

Previously, the beds on the right were configured in an “L” shape. We split this into 2 beds to improve drainage and access to the crops, increasing the growing space by 16 square feet.

In order to build this food garden according to my plan, I need to do the following:

• Set up trellises to support my tomatoes and climbing plants like beans.
• Complete 168 scheduled tasks over the next 5 months, including starting 52 seedlings indoors and weighing harvests as they are gathered. The schedule and weekly reminders come from plannt.ca.
• Set up an automatic drip irrigation system to handle watering.
• Apply mulch on top of the raised beds to prevent weeds.
• Walk around the garden at least once a week to monitor for emerging issues (pests, disease, weeds).

Does that sound like a lot of work?

Honestly, spread over several months, it’s really not that much. I’m getting exercise, I’m spending time outside, and I find it to be excellent for de-stressing. Believe me- once you have a taste of fresh, homegrown food, you’ll feel like it’s worth taking care of a few tasks a week.

So what have I done so far?

Once I had my garden all mapped out, I started seedlings indoors according to the schedule.

Starting Seeds indoors in trays with help from my Tasks page.

Since I have a mix of crops that need to start indoors as well as ones that prefer to start outdoors, I also started a few crops outdoors.

Sowing seeds outdoors with help from my plannt.ca Yard map on the go!

Most of the crops going in the garden have to wait for Last Spring Frost to pass, but some are frost-hardy and don’t mind going in sooner. Always check your seed packet for details on crop-specific schedules.

“Set it and forget it” is my best tip for making sure that you’re not overwhelmed by a food garden. And a high-variety food garden, which naturally comes with a more complicated schedule and plan, is the most practical way to feed your family with your own homegrown food.

That’s all for now- stay tuned if you’re interested to see how my garden and my garden planning platform evolves over the season. My goal is to get 150lbs of food this year!

Go feed yourself,

💚 Alex