Gardening: Reflecting on a weird year in the garden and preparing for the next

The holidays are behind us, and the gardening year has come to a close. Now it’s time to reflect on the past year’s garden and wait for the cabin fever bug to bite to get us going for spring.

This past gardening season was crazy, to say the least. The unanticipated cycles of cold and hot weather scrambled growing cycles and created a lot of frustration, especially when the tomatoes didn’t ripen until late September. The fact that I had to wait an extra month to have my first bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich made me a little grumpy.

The spring was so cold and wet that when it was time to plant our warm-season crops, the soil temperatures were still in the 40s, too cold for the plants to grow. As a result, when the middle of July rolled around and we normally get the warm nights needed to set tomatoes, squash and other warm season vegetables, the plants weren’t ready to bloom. Almost overnight, cold weather was replaced by blazing hot temperatures that stuck around until early September. It was hot enough that most plants stopped growing altogether for six weeks. The heat made it difficult to keep enough water on the gardens and there were a few heat casualties.

The warm-season crops finally started setting on fruit in early September, so we were able to start harvesting by the end of September and early October. I did finally get my BLT and harvested the last of the tomatoes at the end of October.

October stayed unusually warm and with no frosts to set the leaves up to begin falling. While that was nice, we didn’t have much fall color.

When winter dropped in the first week of November, the leaves on many of the trees froze, are still there and will be until either the wind blows them off or the rising spring finally allows them to fall. This doesn’t hurt the trees, but it means they will catch more snow weighing down the branches to the point of breaking.

So here we are. The snow has been on the ground for two months with another two to look forward to before spring. It’s time for gardeners to take a rest and catch up on reading, movie watching and other indoor hobbies before succumbing to the enticing emails and catalogs from our favorite nurseries.

By the end of January, cabin fever will start setting in and I will be ready to start planting seeds for spring and setting up my garden resolutions for the year.

First, I will be experimenting with some unusual and new varieties of vegetables and flowers sent by the All-America Selections folks. Second, because we’ve had two hot Augusts in a row, I will be trying some heat-tolerant tomatoes bred for the South to see if they do better in our increasingly hot summers.

And yes, I will share all these gardening adventures with you, so stay tuned.