Welcome to year three of my climate victory garden! All in all, year two went really well especially with the new raised beds. The spring was very rainy which slowed the growing season down, but we soon caught up here in Zone 9.
With last year’s climate victory garden I attempted to find particular plant species that were better suited to the hot and humid climate in Houston. Certain varieties of plants do better with heat and humidity than others, so this is important to figure out to be a successful gardener as the climate changes.
This article talks about the impacts of climate change on gardening, winter gardening, and planning for spring. Click on the links below to go straight to any section…
- Climate, Climate Change and Gardening
- Winter Gardening
- Preparing for Spring
- Early Planning and Planting
- More Resources
Climate, Climate Change and Gardening
Here is a recap of last year’s discussion about climate change and gardening. This info is more relevant every year!
As the climate shifts around the world, what we can and can’t grow, and how soon or late we plant it, is also shifting. Historical data shows that the planting zones in the US have been shifting northward by about 13 miles per decade.
In practice, this means that gardeners will have to change when they plant, and also shift to growing more heat tolerant varieties of flowers and vegetables, yet also be prepared for erratic weather, such as drought or too much rain, and late cold snaps/freezing weather in the early spring.
In steamy Houston, Texas we will shift from Zone 9 to a Zone 10 (like south Florida) and would probably do well to plant more Asian varieties of garden plants that are tolerant of the heat and humidity. For example, planting Malabar spinach instead of traditional spinach (After growing it last year I find that Malabar spinach is gross! So don’t grow that. LOL! All part of the process. 😉 ).
Another benefit of heat tolerant plants is that they are often more resistant to pest and disease pressure, which is sure to increase as the world warms around you and your garden.
As cooler zones heat up you should be able to plant things a few weeks earlier than you normally would, like planting tomatoes in late March instead of April or May if you lived in the Midwest. Or maybe plant some crops that you never could before.
Not only are growing zones moving, but we also have to contend with more extreme weather and drought. For example, there was an epic cold snap in Texas last year that delayed spring planting, and last spring also brought weeks of endless rain, which made for a slow start to the growing season. (Rainfall is one of the things that has been increasing in direct response to warming conditions.)
If you live out West, you have to contend with extreme heat and epic drought, which will only get worse. You should probably consider catching all the rainwater you can.
The best way to figure out what will work in your climate is to grow several varieties of the same type of plant. The Millennial Gardener on YouTube did just that to figure out the best tomato for his warm, humid climate.
Beyond your garden, there are huge ramifications for large scale agriculture. Not only are shifts happening south to north, but also east to west. The “100th Meridian” in the US, the longitudinal line that separates the arid West from the wetter Midwest and South, has shifted 140 miles east since 1980, and the US’ famed wheat belt is moving north. More reasons to grow your own food.
Climate impact on commercial agriculture is just another reason to grow your own. There’s never been a better time to start or expand your gardening efforts. This will help smooth out the rough patches in a changing world — pandemics, climate change… whatever may come.
Winter Gardening
Given the relatively warm climate in my zone, this is a perfect set up for continued gardening well into the winter, which I have not really focused on before. This winter I grew lots of leafy greens and herbs, some of which are still growing and being harvested today!
A lot of greens such as chard, kale, arugula, lettuce and other plants such as carrots and various herbs, actually do better with cooler temperatures. These sorts of plants are ideal to grow in winter, early spring, and late fall. Also late fall and winter is typically when you plant your garlic and onion bulbs for summer harvest.
To extend my winter harvest I use various bits of plastic sheeting that I had saved to use as a covering during the few days that the temperature got below freezing in my zone. If you live in a zone where the temperatures really drop during the winter, you can make a cold frame to protect your winter veggies.
This year as part of my winter gardening strategy I try to grow some late season tomatoes. I selected a determinant variety called Principe Borghese, which did well. Determinate tomatoes are tomatoes that grow in more of a bush shape versus indeterminate which grow as vines.
Before the first frost I harvested all my root crops and lemongrass. The upper left picture is horseradish root that I harvested, the middle is lemongrass, and the right is ginger root that I grew from a store-bought piece of ginger that started to sprout.
Above left is my new favorite appliance, my Cosori dehydrator. I have used this dehydrator to preserve my harvest, and in this case to dry various herbs and slices of ginger. The middle picture shows pickled ginger that I made, which was some of the best pickled ginger I have ever tasted. I also gave some jars away to friends and they really enjoyed it. On the right is a vase with lemon grass cuttings to plant in the spring.
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Preparing For Spring
One of the most fun parts of gardening is thinking about what you’re going to do next year. This helps you to get through the winter when there’s not much going on in your garden. It’s time to start looking at seed catalogs and thinking about your plan for the upcoming season.
The upper left picture is my SunJoe electric chipper/shredder. This thing is awesome! I use it to shred garden trimmings, small branches, and so forth, and then put them into my mulch bin. My mulch consists mostly of yard trimming, mixed with lots of kitchen waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill (coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, orange peels, and so forth). Learn more about composting here.
As an important sidenote, my household puts trash out for collection about every other week, instead of once or twice a week like every other house in my neighborhood. This is because we recycle all of our kitchen waste into the compost pile and recycle all glass, paper, plastic and metal, which greatly reduces our waste stream. Imagine if everyone lived like this by default — a huge amount of trash could be kept out of landfills!
To keep fruit trees in containers you have to trim the branches and roots back every year. This is the first year I’ve done this and it was definitely overdue. The upper left picture is my Chicago Hardy fig getting its roots trimmed and the picture on the right shows the Chicago Hardy and Beers Black fig trees repotted into new Smart Pot fabric containers with new with fresh soil and compost from my compost bin.
Early Planning and Planting
Gardening is a year-round hobby. One of the fun parts is planning next year’s garden during the winter months. This year’s goal was to find some new varieties of plants that will be successful in Zone 9, for example: heat tolerant carrots, some new pepper varieties, and early-season determinate tomatoes.
If your garden gets to be a certain size then it’s helpful to plan out what you will do for the new year. I usually just make some crude sketches on my iPad. You can get very fancy with this by using garden planning software and apps, spreadsheets and that sort of thing. For some, this can be very helpful, especially if you have a large garden.
I had plenty of seed left over from previous seed orders over the past few years (though you can never have enough seeds 🙂 ). This year I ordered more from Baker Creek and Victory Seeds. Victory Seeds was a new company to me that I learned of by watching the Millennial Gardner on YouTube.
Victory Seeds has quite a selection of different tomato varieties including determinate and dwarf varieties as well as all of the usual other vegetable and flower seeds usually stocked by most seed companies.
This year I ordered Purple Passion asparagus from Stark Brothers. I get lots of plants from Stark Brothers, but I can’t recommend getting asparagus there because they were not in great shape when they arrived. Asparagus is interesting that you really can’t harvest it until the third year after it’s planted because the roots need time to establish themselves. Check out this site to learn how to plant asparagus.
I used seed trays to get a jumpstart on the growing season for the first time last year, with mixed results. Some plants did really well and others did not. I think I was doing several things wrong and I tried to fix that this year.
One additional step this year was the use of a dedicated light source to help the plants grow. It is difficult to find decent grow lights these days because most grow lights are either very cheaply made or are very fancy, and there’s not much middle ground. So I decided to use some lights that I was familiar with, which are NiCrew aquarium lights.
So far so good, I seem to have nearly 100% germination rate of the seeds.
Another reason to plant certain plants early is to escape the inevitable heat of late spring and summer which many plants do not tolerate, especially in a warming world. Some of these heat intolerant plants can also be started in the fall and grown into the winter, such as the leafy greens discussed at the beginning of this article.
So there you have it, a round up of this year’s garden strategy for my changing climate. With the accelerating impacts of climate change happening now, USDA garden zones are moving north. Northern gardeners have shorter and more mild winters, and an earlier spring thaw; while southern gardeners are also having mild winters and even longer, hotter summers.
These changes will allow people to garden both earlier and later into the season, grow new things that they never could before. Unfortunately, these changes also mean that old favorites that we have come to rely on in certain areas, will be difficult or impossible to grow. So we need to adapt and take advantage of any small gains we can to help lessen the overall impacts of climate change on our lives.
If you have any thoughts or tips on gardening in a changing climate please leave them in the comments below.
And as always — thank you for reading!
More Resources
Great YouTube Gardening Channels To Binge Watch!
- Epic Gardening – my favorite gardener on YouTube with excellent in-depth information on raised bed gardening, in-ground gardening and various other topics
- Self-Sufficient Me – a wealth of knowledge, focusing on raised bed gardening in a warm climate
- Milenial Gardener – in-depth videos on warm climate gardening
- Charles Dowding – the Grandmaster!
- Hollis & Nancy’s Homestead – excellent long form gardening videos
- Grafting Dragon Fruit – for Dragon Fruit aficionados
High Quality Seed and Plant Companies
- Victory Seeds – fair prices, fast service and some unique offerings
- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – a bit of everything, and plenty of it!
- Hoss Tools – quality seeds and fast service, with some focus on southern climates
- Kitizawa Seed Company – just got bought out by another company, so not sure how this will affect the quality of their product/service.A great place for heat tolerant Asian garden veggies and more.
- Stark Brothers – best for trees, shrubs and root crops.
- I have bought high quality items from these shops on Etsy:
More Reading on Climate Change and Gardening
- Pandemic-Climate Victory Garden – Year 2
- My Pandemic Victory Garden – Year 1
- Rainwater Collecting – previous post on this blog about catching rainwater for emergency and garden use
- Redrawing the Map: How the World’s Climate Zones Are Shifting – an excellent article from Yale Environment 360
- These Asian veggies might be better for our volatile growing season than European staples
- How to Plant a Victory Garden, Even on a Windowsill
- Gardening for Climate Change – great opinion piece from the NYT Magazine