If you need some more inspiration, there are many websites with suggested new year gardening resolutions. Most of these suggestions include building a compost bin, growing your own food, doing something beneficial for nature, and adopting a natural approach to gardening that more closely mimics nature.
A few examples are below.
Treehugger
https://www.treehugger.com/new-years-resolutions-for-gardeners-4860393
The Treehugger website has some good general advice, quoted below:
Treehugger is the only modern sustainability site that offers advice, clarity, and inspiration for both the eco-savvy and the green living novice. If you're among the almost 50% of Americans who statistics show make New Year's resolutions, be sure to remember gardening when setting your goals for a new year. In fact, consider putting gardening at the top of your list.
Gardening can help you achieve some of the other resolutions that are often at the top of resolution lists, such as slowing down, living a simpler life, and exercising.
Suggested resolutions
- Reduce Your Lawn Area
- Add Native Plants
- Add One New Sustainable Method to Your Gardening Routine
- There are many sustainable practices you can use to increase your gardening enjoyment. One example would be to resolve to eliminate chemical fertilizers.
- Another would be to install one or more rain barrels to capture rain runoff from the roof.
- You could also start using a drip or soaker hose that would put water directly on the plant root zone rather than broadcasting it to unintended places from an oscillating sprinkler.
Garden Design
https://www.gardendesign.com/holiday/new-years-resolutions.html
These are the topics they suggest as resolutions. Check out the website for details for each:
- Choose plants strategically
- Continue learning
- Care for pollinators and wildlife
- Make maintenance easier
- Deter pests naturally
- Nurture nature
Chicago Botanic Gardens https://www.chicagobotanic.org/ has an exhaustive list of resolutions. Some of these suggestions might better be described as projects, since they are “one and done” instead of the concept of a continued commitment. Their ideas are divided into seasons; a few are listed here.
- Hang a bird feeder.
- Build a compost bin.
- Invest in an excellent pruner.
- Prune a crabapple or pear tree into an espalier.
- Get to know orchids at the Orchid Show.
- Build a raised bed.
Spring resolutions
- Start a compost pile.
- Test your soil.
- Plant flowers in Pantone's color of the year: rose quartz and serenity blue.
- Switch to organic fertilizers.
- Weave native plants into your flower beds.
- Plant milkweed for monarch butterflies.
- Provide a water source for bees and butterflies.
Summer resolutions
- Install a rain barrel.
- Plant peppers in honor of the genus Capsicum, the 2016 Herb of the Year.
- Mix vegetables and flowers together in beds and borders.
- Transform a balcony or patio into a container garden.
Fall resolutions
- Grow three new varieties of lettuce.
- Rethink all that lawn.
- Plant a berry-bearing tree or shrub to feed the birds.
- Preserve your vegetable harvest by learning how to can.
- Rake and save fallen leaves for winter mulch for your garden beds.
- Grow your own garlic.
- Add allium bulbs in fall to deter deer.
- Save seeds from flowers and vegetables to plant next year.
Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143. Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.
Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.