2010 Garden Journal
This year, I decided to add a detailed garden journal to my website to record my monthly garden activities, garden chores and what was blooming and growing in the garden. My 2010 promise was to faithfully keep track of changes I make, garden experiments and our results. Well, I did a better job than some years but still not great. Luckily, there is always next year!
March 2010 - It's all about planning.
April 2010 - A really early start to the vegetable garden. We had plenty of sunny days with above normal temperatures. The lack of frost days allowed for a great start to the vegetable garden and spring garden chores.
May 2010 - A warm wet start followed by freezing temperatures resulted in freeze damage to new growth and young leaves on many trees and shrubs. The last half of the month was unusually warm and dry. We had to water the vegetable garden every day and this is the first time I remember grass turning dormant by the end of May.
June 2010 - Plenty of rain in June once again produced some terrific blooms in the garden as well as kept the cooler season lettuce and spinach producing for an extended period. The extra moisture has certainly cause the potatoes to sprout and we had to mound them several times during June.
July 2010 - Warm weather combined with plenty of rain has meant green lawns, lots of garden produce and fantastic blooms. Amazingly, other than the dreaded Japanese Beetle and some Fall Webworms we have not seen a lot of summer insect damage.
August 2010 - Lot's of sunshine and warm but not hot weather made for a perfect August. The vegetable garden was a huge success this year with little disease or bug damage.
September 2010 - The colour in the garden this September was spectacular. Not only were the fall colours both intense and long lasting, but an unusually mild fall meant that many of the summer rebloomers like roses and spireas were still flush.
October 2010 - Mild weather continued making extending the gardening season easy. We picked beans right up until mid-October this year and did not need to harvest the last of the garden produce until late October..