Once a year, at the end of the summer garden season, when the temperatures start to hover around 50 to 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), I start the process of giving my garden its annual review. I spent this past weekend wrapping up the 2023 garden season. This included prepping the tropical and non-cold-hardy plants for overwintering indoors and other necessary autumn tasks. Since I’m already in the end-of-year frame of mind, now is the perfect time to do my 2023 Year In Review of the garden.
If you want to know how to perform your own Spring Garden Plan, look no further than Garden Planning for the Spring Growing Season.
Performing an annual autumnal year in review is important because the past garden season is still fresh in your mind. You readily remember the pride and accomplishment of your harvest. You also still feel the painful sting of everything that went wrong. With it all fresh in your mind, you’ll remember ideas that occurred to you as you struggled with this year’s particular garden challenges. No two years are exactly the same in a garden, so it’s important to make a good assessment with all the memories and facts at your fingertips.
2023 Garden Review: Initial Impressions
This year had its own set of challenges that last year didn’t have at all. I heard reviews from a lot of fellow gardeners that garden produce in 2023 was slow to mature. I can relate. Depending on where they live, my gardening friends experienced everything from torrential rains, horrible mosquitoes, or blistering heat. From where I stand, it seems like no gardener will leave 2023 a good review!
That’s not to say there weren’t successes this year, though. While 2023 was a difficult one for the garden, I also learned a lot that I’ll take with me to future gardening seasons. That hard-earned knowledge that I harvested from this 2023 garden is a success on its own.
2023 Garden Review: Wins & Sins
Looking back on my 2023 Spring Garden Plan, I can see the seeds of both the wins and sins that occurred in the year now in review. It’s helpful to have my spring plan with me as a reference. I also keep a photo log of my plants in Microsoft OneNote that aids me in remembering what happened when and how things developed over time. With these in hand, I’ll dive right in.
Wins: What Went Well?
Plant Locations
Plant locations were fairly well thought out this year. After moving the Anthurium to my husband’s office window, the plant consistently sent up new flowers all season long. We had cut it back and separated it into cuttings when we moved with our plants in Spring of 2022, and I was concerned it wouldn’t flower like it used to. Its new location was a good idea. It told us it approved of its new location by sending up a new flower stalk by February 6th.
In late 2022, I had taken cuttings of my overgrown prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura) and placed them in budding vases to grow roots. In early February 2023, those cuttings were ready to plant. I had just the location. A previous batch of prayer plant cuttings had failed to take root on one side of a terracotta planter and so these new cuttings filled that out quite nicely. We also moves that planter from the shadowed front hall to a sunny window atop the kitchen freezer. The signature red color of the leaves that had been fading returned significantly with better sunlight.
Natural Pest Control
It’s important to note that the garden had a lot of pests in 2023, which I’ll cover in the Sins section below. But there were some Wins here too. Most notably, successful purchasing and releasing of native lady beetles as a natural pest deterrent. Our aphid problem practically vanished overnight and the white flies never got a foothold.
We used our mint plant to naturally clear spiders from the back door. If you’ve never tried this method, I highly recommend it. Spiders naturally flock to our back door because the porch light attracts night insects that spiders find tasty. I don’t mind spiders keeping unwanted insects away, but spiderwebs around the back door we use to get to the garden is a nonstarter. We keep a kitchen herb box at our back door too which the mint also protected. Growing mint in a pot at our back door is definitely in the win column of this 2023 review.
Sins: What Went Poorly?
Insects
So. Many. Insect. Pests!
The incident with the Portuguese kale is the most notable sin. Our initial placement of the mint next to the kale was a stroke of genius we didn’t recognize. Our sin was in later moving the mint away from the kale. As mentioned earlier, the movement of the mint to the back porch light was an effective deterrent that cleared the back door from spiders, but we should have moved the Portuguese kale with it. With the mint no longer protecting the Portuguese kale, cabbage moths quickly moved in and ate the kale overnight. Sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences will bite you in the bum.
Aphids were a huge problem this year. While we combatted them naturally with an influx of native lady beetles, I wonder if there was something I should have done to deter the aphids so I didn’t have to fight them at all. Something to consider in the 2024 Garden Ideas section below.
Indoors, we started the year off poorly with fungus gnats, and later spider mites, on the indoor Thomas Jefferson cayenne pepper plants. Both insects are common indoor plant pests. In our case however, it was just too much for the cayenne pepper plants and we ended up removing them to avoid contaminating other indoor plants.
Seed Starting Issues
Because we moved in Spring of 2022, we started our garden late last year. The timing of our indoor seed sowing in 2023 was partly a knee jerk reaction to last year’s inescapable tardiness and partly a lack of proper understanding of our new growing zone. [Did you know the USDA updated the gardening zones in November 2023?] In effect, we started our seeds too early in 2023 which necessitated keeping the seedlings in their seed trays well after they were ready to be planted.
The soil medium we used for seed starting in 2023 was exceedingly poor. As urban gardeners (at least until we can build our garden paradise on our own land) we are limited to the quality we can find in stores. That quality in soil was significantly lacking in 2023. We were left to deal with a soil medium closer to decayed mulch than true garden soil. This inhibited our seedling start and likely set them up for many problems that occurred throughout 2023.
We bought an excellent new seed starting lamp light this year to replace one that broke. While the purchase was an excellent idea, new equipment means you have to learn to use it. Regretfully, I overestimated the grow lamp and set the lamp too high from the soil bed. This made the seedlings leggy. Combined with soil and timing, the seedlings didn’t have their best start this year.
Mitigating Circumstances
All gardens have problems. What matters is how you deal with them. These are some challenges we successfully overcame and deserve a place in our 2023 review.
Our weather this year was largely mild in 2023 except for a two week duration in late July. For those two weeks, temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) slowed tomato ripening and caused a few split skins (common tomato problems). We were largely successful in dealing with these high temps, however. Watering in the cooler mornings before the heat of the day, and afterward about an hour before dew fall ensured the plants replenished the evaporated water lost during the day without boiling the roots.
When our beloved chipmunks (who we do adore) kept digging up our direct sown zucchini seeds, we invited them to shop elsewhere by planting habaneros. They did eat one habanero seed, but they did not appreciate the capsicum in the least. They promptly left the 8 remaining habanero plants and the rest of our late-sown seeds alone. Sorry guys, but my garden is not your buffet.
[Do you have problems with chipmunks and squirrels in your garden? Check out these tips!]
Notable Recognitions
Our River Birch is a tree of special significance to us. [You can read all about it as my husband guest-posts: Tale Of Two Trees] In 2023, the tree came of age and produced flowers for the very first time. The flowers of a river birch are insignificant to look at, but it was a momentous occasion for us.
2024 Garden Ideas
We’ve long had a love-hate relationship with the typical seed starting trays that are so common in garden nurseries and hardware stores. The 2023 gardening year was no exception. It’s likely that the issues we had with seed starting indoors would have been partially avoided with soil blocking rather than seed trays. It is an idea I intend to try myself in 2024. [Spoiler Alert! It went really well!]
Planting marigolds to naturally deter pests. I have long been told that Marigold flowers naturally deter pests like aphids and whiteflies. My site visit to the gardens of George Washington’s Mount Vernon showcased this exact tactic too. I fully intend to add marigolds to the garden next year and avoid the pest problems we experienced in 2023. Autumn is the time to purchase seeds for cheap. So I’ll be ordering marigold seeds now for next year’s garden.
That’s A Wrap on Our 2023 Garden Review!
So there you have it! Our Eastborn Gardens Year In Review! As Maya Angelou famously said, “If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.” Performing an annual garden review in the autumn sets you up for success in the following year. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two from our failures and successes and that it also helps you in the year to come!
