Just found this thread today, as I look out the window at some gross mix of ice/snow/slush/sleet/I dunno, maybe plague of locusts is next? haha.
So.... we had the polar vortex here. -50 wind chills, temps in the -20s, for 2 days. What do you all think the chances are of my blueberry and raspberry bushes surviving that and coming back in the spring? I've only had them for a couple of years and our last couple of winters were relatively mild, for us. Two of the 3 blueberry bushes are rated for zones colder than where I live, the other is for my zone. Same for my 3 raspberry bushes.
I am scaling back my gardens this year (I have a 4 x 8 plot in a community garden, a 4 x 4 raised bed plus some big tomato plant-sized containers in my building's very small yard that my landlord graciously lets me use). For a couple of reasons:
We have new kittens (well, I guess not all THAT new any more, it's been a few months) who take up a lot of our time and attention, and I'm not certain that I can keep them alive AND also start everything from seed like I usually do. I don't really have a good catproof place in our apartment to keep the grow light and these little guys are into EVERYTHING. Plus, starting seeds here is such a PITA. Our spring weather is so iffy, and I end up potting up the seedlings several times over because they're getting huge and want to go into the ground.... except, oh wait, it's still snowing in late April or 40 degrees in late May so they can't! :P So I'm cramming stuff under the grow light, rotating things daily because the stems are bending toward the light, propping up some plants on whatever I can find that's tall, so that everything's the right distance from the light and nothing's growing spindly and weak. Maybe I put too much effort into it but every year this takes up SO much time and I just don't see myself doing that, kitten-wrangling, and, oh yeah, going to work every day, haha.
So I'm thinking of - gasp! - giving myself a break this year and mostly buying seedlings, at least for the warm weather crops - tomatoes, basil, peppers, maybe eggplant. $$$$. Which means, grow fewer plants. That's fine. Last year I had 22 tomato plants crammed into those 2 spaces and that was really too much - both for the plants and for my own sanity.
I'm also thinking of getting some of those garden bags to plant tomatoes in, rather than putting them right into the community bed. Someone with a bed near mine did that last year and their yields were insane! I've had that plot for 5 or 6 years now. I'm not able to totally replace the soil (which was initially provided to us), though I top it off with compost each year and have tried various amendments. Yet, I've noticed more disease and less production in the past couple of years, compared to my backyard which has fresh soil/compost but otherwise the same growing conditions, and the experts at my garden org tell me I should take a few years off of growing tomatoes in that spot. Which is, like, the main thing I grow! So this seems like a possible solution - still grow the tomatoes but keep them out of the soil that's exhausted from having tomatoes in it for multiple years. Does that seem logical? Has anyone had success with these bags?
At any rate, buying starts and garden bags is going to involve more money than I typically spend on gardening so it seems logical to grow fewer things this year. I'm going from free seeds to minimum $3/plant, which is painful to me! On one hand that makes me sad because I love growing a wide variety of weird tomatoes. My garden org does a free seed swap where I can get access to all sorts of bizarre varieties I've never heard of! I really did bite off more than I could chew last year though.
I can still direct sow stuff like greens and peas. Assuming it doesn't snow well into April like it did last year, ARGH.