Now is the time of the year where I like to pause, and take a look back at my hobbies over the last year. Lets look at the garden first…

2025 in the garden can best be described as “Interesting”

Spring burst onto the scene, bold and bright and early! We got our first bloom (a snow drop) in the first week of March. It’s not quite a record – 2024 saw snowdrops in late February, but it’s still earlier than most years.

But then around late May, things took a little turn

While the irises did bloom, they didn’t do as well as they normally would. It looks like my collection got hit by the iris borer moth. The foliage looked terrible, I didn’t get as many blooms as I should, and by the time I realized what was happening, I’d lost about half the rhizomes. Happily, I have A LOT of irises, and by the end of summer (after I’d removed the dead stuff) they all started to recover. They should come through just fine in 2026.

Summer itself seemed to get off to a pretty good start. We seemed to be getting rain frequently (every other day or so). But then I noticed something. While it was frequent rain – it was never a lot of rain. It was a downpour for a half an hour followed by sun and heat.

Not enough to really do much for the garden. For the flowers, it wasn’t so bad. I have a fairly drought-tolerant garden. I only watered when we didn’t get rain for a week. But for the veg garden… that’s where I really took the hit.

By the time I started watering it regularly, it was mostly too late. That’s not to say it was all bad. I got a fantastic harvest of carrots, potatoes, garlic and shallots. The snap peas did ok, but I’ve definitely had better seasons. We got something like five nice sugar baby watermelons, which was great as they were a new one for us. But I only I got one eeeny weeny zucchini, and we didn’t start getting green beans until almost the end of the season. The leeks and green onions were also a write off.

I was finally able to grow yellow tomatoes – and for once we weren’t overrun with them. But that’s a sign they had a harder than normal year too.

I grew mutant inedible squash (though that had nothing to do with the weather – just my own lack of knowledge). I got a handful of baby pumpkins, a small basket of gourds and the cucumber harvest was definitely poor.

But lessons were learned and will be taken into the new year.

The effect of the drought on the garden didn’t really start to show until late summer into fall. The Susans and Asters bloomed but had a very short season. Even the Coneflowers were a little lack luster. The Cosmos I planted probably struggled most of all. They are usually the stars of the end of season but not this year.

The roses had another tough year. Though not quite as bad as the previous. They handle drought pretty well once they are established. And I managed to keep on top of the darn Rose Sawfly for the most part. The #(%@ing Japanese beetles were another matter. We battled daily and I won’t say I completely lost… more like we came to a stalemate.

The roses don’t bloom well in the really humid, melting heat of July and August, so their best time is June, then September and October. It’s one of the reasons I always pick roses that bloom more than once.

If there was one major success this year, I’d say it was the sunflowers. I grew some absolutely beautiful ones this year and hope to do so again next year.

In terms of actual garden work. I feel like I stayed on top of the weeding, mostly. I expanded both the front garden and island garden, and redid the garden along the side of the front porch. I added a new garden along the back fence. But that was it.

In the new year, I’d like to widen the gardens around the catio and down the side fence in the back yard. But not to add new plants – just to make some better room for the ones that are there.

I had great success with seed snails, so I think we’ll be starting lots of seeds here come April. Hopefully 2026 will bring a beautiful, bountiful garden!