Each year is different. It’s one of the things I like best about gardening and working in the orchard. You never quite know what is going to do well. It’s possible to do absolutely everything right (or wrong) and still end up with a mystery result. In the original Every Year is a Good and a Bad Year post, we had a combination of personal events conspire to derail the garden to an extent, yet we still ended up with an amazing crop of some items.
This year it’s a combination of personal and weather issues. We had a really wet spring and the warm weather was late in coming. After attempting to plant our potatoes twice (and having them rot both times), we decided that this probably wasn’t going to be a good potato year. In fact, a combination of wet weather in the spring, a really late frost, a few scorcher days, followed by unseasonable coolness have all conspired to make our garden almost worthless this year. (A pleasant exception has been our brassicas, which includes items like broccoli.) Of course, that’s the bad news.
The amazing thing is that our fruit trees and grape vines have absolutely adored the weather and a bit of a lack of quality weeding time. The pears are so loaded down that I’m actually having to cut some fruit in order to keep the branches from breaking. The grapes are similarly loaded. One vine became so heavy that it actually detached from the cable holding it and I had to have help tying it back into place. Nature is absolutely amazing because there is always a balance to things. A bad year in one way normally turns into a good year in another when you have a good plan in place.
We keep seeing the same lesson from nature—variety is essential. When you create a garden of your own, you absolutely must plan for a variety of items to ensure that at least some of the items will do well and your larder will stay full. Eating a wide variety of food also has significant health benefits. Although you might read articles about the “perfect” food, there is in reality no perfect food. In order to maintain good health, you need to eat a variety of foods and obtain the nutrients that each food has to offer. It seems as if nature keeps trying to teach that lesson by ensuring that some items will be in short supply during some years.
What sorts of items do you find are highly susceptible to the weather? Which items seem to grow reasonably well each year? Let me know your thoughts at [email protected].