Okay, it’s that time of the gardening year! Time to look back at how things went, what worked, what didn’t, what we’ll try again, and what we’ll set aside.

Plans were made and, of course, plans changed as time went on. Here is a video I made of what I was planning, before starting seeds indoors.

Aside from a few things changing from my original plans, the entire year turned out to be quite a difficult one.

This was the first growing season since the average first and last frost dates were reset. “Climate” is weather over a defined region, averaged over 30 years, plus or minus 5-10 years. We crossed over that 30 year mark and the new averages for our area tell me that our last frost date range (they don’t have just a day anymore, but a span of days) is in the end of May, instead of June 2.

Yeeeaaaahhhh… No.

This year, our last frost date turned out to be well past June 2, so I’m glad I didn’t try to direct sow or transplant anything in May. May was a very frustrating month. We had some very warm days all month, but the overnight temperatures were quite cold. The soil never had a chance to warm up and stay warm at a temperature favorable for many things. Especially for transplants.

Then, we got hit with a combination of drought, heat waves and continuous smoke from wildfires. I’m honestly surprised some things did as well as they did. Many things, however, simply stagnated. When cleaning up some of the garden beds in the fall, I found that weather was not the only issue, but so was invading root systems from nearby trees!

One thing we did differently was winter sowing mixes of seeds in the fall of 2024. A couple of beds were complete failures, while others did surprisingly well. It really was a game changer for us, and I’ve already winter sown several beds for our 2026 garden.

So I’ll be doing things differently for this year’s analysis, too. I’ll be categorizing things by winter sowing, transplants, direct sowing, and food forest/perennials, before doing a last post with my final analysis and plans for 2026.

I’m hoping to get one of these out every day over the next few days, if all goes well. I’ll be going over a lot of old posts and videos in the process, so it can take quite a lot of time to put together.

Hopefully, these will be as useful for you as they are for me, as we go over what succeeded, what failed, and why – as best as I can determine! I can already say now, though, that a lot of our future gardening plans are going to involve protective infrastructure. 😄

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

The Re-Farmer