2023 Garden Review

_{^{I may earn commissions for purchases made through any Amazon links in this post. See disclosure here.}}

Let’s look back and see what happened in my garden this year. Where I can, I’ve included links to my YouTube videos, so you could click on those for more details.

January

I actually harvested some spinach from my new bonus bed—a great winter gardening success! The spinach in that bed, planted last August, started growing again in early spring, so I was harvesting it for several weeks before my spring planted spinach grew.

February

I organized my seed stash and helped to sort seeds for my local Extension Service’s seed fest. I also hosted a winter sowing display at a local environmental organization’s seed swap event. Meanwhile, mealybugs infested some of my indoor plants, but I caught them early and posted a video: How to Get Rid of Mealybugs.

March

March was a month of several firsts! I was invited to participate in my first online summit—the Hobbyscool Harvest to Table Summit. For that I prepared a 20-minute presentation on Growing Herbs in Containers and a PDF guide to go with it. By the way, the parsley I potted up for that event is still alive, almost a year later. 

Stay tuned because I’m going to be in next year’s Harvest to Table Summit! This time I’ll be talking about winter sowing.

This month we held the first meeting of the new network I’ve formed for Christians in the Chicago area who are working in any kind of garden related job or ministry. This first meeting was a virtual one.

Also in March, I became the president of my garden club, the Palos Heights Garden Club. And I finally started this year’s winter sowing, the latest I’ve ever done it, but that’s OK because—even though it’s called winter sowing—it can be done at any time of year. I began some indoor seed starting at the same time.

April

On April 8th, I spotted my first butterfly of the year—a Red Admiral. Ten days later I direct sowed snow peas, spinach, lettuce, and radishes in the raised beds of my victory garden. Given how the weather has been, I wish I’d started earlier, but last month was pretty busy. Fortunately, I was able to start harvesting spinach already from my winter garden!

May

I finally planted broccoli in mid-May before going on to plant the warm season crops later. Here’s a mid-May tour of my Slava Ukraini Victory Garden. It seemed like a late start for the broccoli, but I did get a great harvest from them at the end of the summer and early fall. I also started marigolds in the greenhouse shelf stand in my driveway. These did better than the ones I direct sowed.

Also in May, robins began nesting in a wall container on our deck. We did not name them this time because the last we had robins nesting here, I saw a hawk grab and carry poor Beatrice away. Although I enjoyed watching and filming these nestlings as they hatched and the parents began feeding them, I did not post about them until they fledged.

June

The robins on our deck fledged from their nest on June 2nd, and I caught part of the adventure on camera. 

In early June I finished planting the warm season crops in the victory garden and set up the supports for them. Meanwhile, I harvested lots of spinach and amaranth, and I made my annual batch of Chive Blossom Vinegar. 

And my husband finished stripping and painting the antique water pump I bought at a backyard garden sale last month. Even though I’ll continue to collect washtubs and other laundry items, I consider this bright red pump to be the finishing touch on my Wishy Washy Washer Woman Garden. It was ready in time for our 4th of July party.

On June 25th—after several days of horrible airline delays—we arrived in Tegucigalpa to join our Bakke Graduate University class for the Honduras immersion course. I took hundreds of photos of the plants and scenery as well as of our group’s exploration of various ministries, but I have yet to post them. What I found most botanically interesting was all of the orchids and air plants growing on trees. There were tillisandia growing on the electric lines all around the city!

July

We returned from Honduras on July 2nd, just in time to get ready to our annual 4th of July party. The garden was in good shape as the setting for this event because family and friends had watered and harvested while I was away. Here’s how the kitchen garden looked in mid-July. 

In addition to harvesting garlic and the first five or six heads of broccoli, started harvesting wax beans, tomatoes, and Prima apples. The winter sown chamomile that I’d planted last year started producing after the chamomile a friend gave me had quit, so I harvested and dried lots of chamomile flowers for tea this year. I harvested lots of gooseberries and black currants, too, and I canned black currant jam for the first time. Another big first for this year was successfully growing butterfly pea flowers, which I also dried for making tea later. At the end of the month I finally harvest the first cucumbers I’ve grown in several years.

I enjoyed a local garden walk in my town this month. Meanwhile the sunflowers in my kitchen garden and many other blooms in my ornamental gardens created beautiful displays all around our front and back yards.

August

This month started off with a trip to Minneapolis for my first in-person GardenComm (Garden Communicators International) conference. The garden tours were amazing, but once again I could not keep up with posting all of my photos. I did share my own garden when I got back—and how it was cared for in my absence. 

A couple days after my return, my garden club and I visited the Gardens at Ball. Ball Seed Company had been one of the sponsors of the GardenComm conference, so this was extra interesting for me.

This was the month that my husband completely rebuilt my strawberry bed, and I planted it. The new bed is a little deeper and bigger. The victory garden continued to produce lots of tomatoes, Malabar spinach, As I continued to harvest and water the garden, I kept using or preserving everything I harvested. I also weeded, deadheaded, and pruned the garden when I could. And I had to remember to keep watering my indoor houseplants!

On one Saturday morning I went to a tea foraging workshop. With all the chamomile, mint, pineapple mint, and my first butterfly pea flowers, this has been a big year for me growing tea! In the afternoon I visited my friend Nina Koziol’s garden. I recommend you keep an eye out for the two books she has coming out this next year: White Gardens and Ultimate Guide to Small Space Kitchen Gardens. The kitchen gardens book has a picture from MY kitchen garden on its cover!

By the end of the month, I planted some cool crops for fall—lettuce, radishes, beets, and snow peas. Once again, the fall snow peas were a bust.

September

This Late Summer Kitchen Garden Tour shows how my victory garden looked in early September. This month’s harvests included tomatoes, cucamelons, eggplants, wax beans, green beans, broccoli, peppers, celery, Malabar spinach, and the first head of red cabbage. This month I canned some pepperoncini and Biquinho peppers and froze some garden tomato sauce. I’ve been freezing many tomatoes whole to use in cooking or canning later as well.

I visited two gardens, a local dahlia fan and a new network member who donates his farm’s produce to local food pantries. Girl Scouts came to visit my garden, and I helped them with their gardening badge. I set up my two fairy gardens just in time for their visit. I also hosted a brunch tea party early in the month and an evening cookout later in the month—both ended up in the Mackinac Island Garden in my side yard.

October

We had a first frost alert in the middle of the month, which caused me to harvest almost all of the remaining tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. However, there wasn’t much damage, so I was able to keep harvesting cucamelons, beans, broccoli, Malabar spinach, lettuce, radishes, and radish greens throughout the rest of the month. I planted garlic near the end of the month.

We got our real first frost at the end of the month, plus our first snow on Halloween. Before that happened, I harvested another big round of green tomatoes to ripen indoors. I dehydrated most of the cherry tomatoes from these last two harvests. I harvested the leeks and celery, too, because I didn’t want to deal with them later in the cold. 

November

Since first frosts have been coming later and temperatures have been averaging warmer and warmer for years, it was not a big surprise to learn that my area has moved up another half-zone, from 5b to 6a, when the USDA put out a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map this month. 

November began with me harvesting what I could after that first snow. I decided to keep growing the Swiss chard in the bonus bed and napa cabbage in the Wishy Washy bed under cover now. Since we still had quite a few warmer weather days left, I started cleaning up the kitchen garden slowly. One one of those days, I collected marigold seeds from the dried seed pods. I kept the cabbages and broccoli going until the end of the month, until we finished putting the garden to bed right before Thanksgiving. While my husband worked on the kitchen garden, I cleaned up the ornamental beds. After Thanksgiving, I began working on my winter containers.

By the way, my network had another first this month—our first in-person meeting, held at Navarro Farm.

December

Another exciting first for me was my first collaboration with other garden influencers. Heather’s team at Garden Thoughtfully put together a video of a Gardener’s Favorite Things. You’ll see mine, a plant dolly for moving heavy containers, at the 0.52 mark. I love all of these gardeners’ favorite things!

Thanks to those green tomatoes that have slowly been ripening indoors, I’ve had fresh tomatoes for our salads all the way up to December this year. And thanks to the frost cover over my bonus bed, we’ve had fresh Swiss chard all the way through to the end of this month and more.

You can see how a number of my indoor houseplants have fared and how I’ve incorporated them into my holiday decorating here. I still have more in other rooms all over the house. Many of them could use a repotting and more attentive care, but I’m happy if I can just keep most of them alive through the winter. My two rosemary plants that have survived about 5 years now are a big triumph!

---

Well, there you have it—proof that I do indeed garden all year round! I’m looking forward to an even better year of gardening in 2024. Happy New Year!