Every gardener, worldwide, has glorious expectations of the upcoming gardening season. Many families rely on their gardens for daily food and for getting through winter with canning and preserving the summer harvest. Gardeners can control many area of the actual process of growing, like enriching soil and getting good seed stock. We can also control some pest/insect infestation. Controlling the weather, well that’s a whole different story. To some degree, you can mitigate adverse weather conditions. Planting after a last frost date, provided the full moon has occurred is a relatively safe bet. If you live in a northern climate, have some frost blankets on hand for those last-minute dips in temperatures. Even in a drought situation you can still water and save some crops, provided you have access to water. It’s very disheartening to watch all your hard work produce very little.
The last two years here in Maine were drought-stricken. Because of the drought issues, we set up our rain collection system in mid-May instead of the beginning of June. The past two years it took many storms to fill up 6 fifty-five gallon barrels. This year, one whopping, torrential storm filled all the barrels in 24 hours! I was elated! I keep a gardening journal that details weather, insect issues, successes, and failures. The two previous years we had almost no rain June and most of July with some very hot temperatures. This June was very different. We had 28 out of 30 days of rain. Not nice gentle showers that delicately water everything, I am talking pounding, two to three days of nonstop rain storms. Totals of 3-4 inches of rain per storm. Roads and streams flooding were a daily occurrence. Our dirt road took a beating. At times it looked like chocolate milk running down the sides of the road. Continue reading“The Garden Failed This Year, Now What?, by Hollyberry”