🫠It's gonna be another crazy growing season!

Published: Sun, 05/19/24

Updated: Fri, 05/24/24

Greetings, Rural Sprout readers,

How was your week? Did you get to play in the dirt a bit? It rained here for most of the week. But whenever the sun came out, I went out to The Engineer’s house and yanked up weeds in the garden. The good news is that with all this rain, the weeds are looking great! I’ve never seen them so high.

If only the rest of the garden looked so good.

I feel like I’ve been gardening my whole life. Some of my earliest memories of Dad are the two of us in the garden. One of my earliest memories of my brother and I is when Dad yelled at us to stop eating all the peas. Instead, we just sat behind the pea trellis so Dad couldn’t see us eating all the peas.

I’m pretty sure we cleaned out his entire crop that spring.

But for as long as I’ve been gardening, the past three or four years have been some of the toughest years I’ve had growing a vegetable garden. The weather has become so unpredictable. Even with the updated USDA Hardiness Zone map, I still find myself dealing with a surprise frost well outside the normal range.

Or we’ve gone from weeks on end of rain to a drought with blazing temperatures.

It’s certainly made gardening more challenging than I remember. It got me wondering about our readers. Are you struggling with the same issues? Have you noticed a drastic change in weather patterns over the past few years, too? I’d love to hear from you about your gardening experiences in the past few years as we deal with these climate issues.

What are you doing differently, and how are you adapting?

Last year’s summer was the hottest on record, and NOAA is saying this year will be hotter. It’s shaping up to be another interesting growing season. I have a feeling that in another month, I’ll be dreaming about this rainy spring and wishing for an encore.

Fingers crossed that we all have a good growing season.

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That's all for this week, Rural Sprout Readers.

Sincerely,

Tracey Besemer

Editor in Chief

Rural Sprout

Owner

Almost a Homesteader

Penn Media Ltd
3 Culver Park Close
Kingsbridge DEVON TQ7 1LD
UNITED KINGDOM

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