JoAnne Skelly: The gardening year in review

This is my last article for 2023, but I’ll be back early next year. I thought I would look back on all the gardening experiences I had this year.

The year started less than auspiciously. We were without power, water or heat for five days. That was followed by flooding, which provided our annual rainfall in one week. Then, with two feet of snow on the ground into March and wet cold weather, I worried if our trees would survive the inundation. Though they did persist, unfortunately, the weight of the wet snow that turned to ice, combined with the wind, broke many tree branches, not only at our house, but throughout Northern Nevada.

At the end of March, I wrote not to work wet soils, to avoid damaging the structure of the soil. By early April the winter vole damage was revealed as the worst I had ever seen. They had carved trails out of much of our main lawn area, after living under the snow for so long.

I finally got my “recycled” garden in by early June. The leaf mold soil nature and I had been making for over a decade ended up giving me the best yield of tomatoes and lemon cucumbers I had ever had. That’s not to say that the garden was without its challenges. First, there were armyworms, which I handpicked for weeks. After surviving that invasion, then came the tomato hornworms. More handpicking. But diligent watchfulness paid off.

At the end of June, I hadn’t been able to do many landscape maintenance chores due to the rains. What a water year! I also hadn’t been able to fertilize the lawns either. However, the iris blooms were prolific and huge this year and I was deadheading like mad.

Blossom end rot showed up in early August on my zucchini. You may have seen it on your tomatoes. It looks like a hard brown spot on the blossom end of the fruit. Fortunately, the tomatoes were fine.

I think everyone had an amazing fruit production year, since we didn’t have a late freeze to kill off the blossoms on the fruit trees. I even had a huge grape crop. This was probably due to no early freezes in late summer, which allowed a longer time for ripening. We donated more than 400 pounds of apples and there are more still on the tree.

Nature always gives gifts among all the work and pests such as the gorgeous fruit tree, iris and penstemon blooms. On top of that, the fall colors are so beautiful now. I think these rewards are why we continue to garden.

JoAnne Skelly is associate professor & extension educator emerita at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Reach her at skellyj@unr.edu.