Now that there is snow on the ground and any possibility of actual gardening has ground to a halt, I find myself thinking about the growing season that just passed and the next one coming up. This wasn’t a great gardening year for me. A brand new human being sprouted in my household in January and ended up requiring a lot of care and maintenance throughout the growing season, along with the care and feeding of a four-year-old seedling we already had. The actual garden got mostly neglected. Weeds took over around mid-summer and I didn’t put the effort into beating them back that I would like to.

Still, the two trees and various perennials I planted in 2016 just chugged along all season even under and among the weeds. Their roots should be growing and strengthening, the seed bank will gradually shift toward “weeds” I like, and I think there is plenty of hope that the garden I originally envisioned will gradually start to take shape in the next few years. It helps that what I envision is only semi-tame to begin with.

What went well:

• The Asian pear tree grew like crazy in its second season, and is now about as tall as it was advertised to be. Early in the season, it was swaying alarmingly in high winds, but the bottom seemed stationary so I didn’t stake it. Later in the season, it seemed to strengthen and stiffen, and is now doing well.
• The Asian persimmon grew a little bit in its first year. Any growth was welcome after my first attempt with an Asian persimmon was dead on arrival. We will see how it does next year.
• Other perennials did just fine in their second year, including lemon balm and butterfly milkweed. The yarrow the previous owners had, which I moved, continues to do well. My chives and garlic chives both did well and flowered. Violets and green and gold both started to fill in nicely as ground covers. The previous owner’s black-eyed Susans are doing well and even getting a bit aggressive. They have a bunch of bee balm that is doing well, which is good because I think I destroyed all the bee balm I planted myself when trying to pull out some aggressive daisies. It’s not that I hate daisies, but they don’t have much redeeming ecological value and one small clump is enough for me. A couple of the previous owners’ purple coneflowers are still hanging on too.
• My greatest triumph of the year was getting wild strawberries sprouted and established.
• My plan to attract black swallowtails with parsley, dill and fennel was a qualified success. Something ate the dill early on, but the parsley survived all year, and the fennel grew like crazy (I didn’t know fennel was such a large perennial, I plan to keep it but may move it elsewhere.)
• Thai basil and Thai sweet basil did awesome in our big tubs as usual.
• Maypop – Planted a couple vines as a long-term substitute for clematis and they took off. Will see if I end up regretting this some day.
• I’m almost embarrassed to say my dandelions and chicory are doing well, but hey, I have had a soft spot for these “weeds” ever since I was a kid and they are always welcome in my garden.
• I had a pitcher plant and Venus fly trap that were very happy for awhile growing in Sphagnum moss under my air conditioning condensate line. The Venus fly trap petered out sometime in the fall, but I brought the pitcher plant in for the winter and it seems to be bumping along.

What didn’t go well:

• No luck even sprouting anise hyssop or mountain mint. I have never read anywhere that these seeds are hard to sprout.
• I made a half-hearted attempt at miner’s lettuce again. A couple anemic seedlings just petered out as soon as it got hot.
• Surprisingly, no luck with sunflowers, because squirrels just ate them right away.
• I tried cilantro in window boxes, but it just bolted right away. The flowers were semi-interesting for a few weeks and attracted interesting little pollinators, but then they just died and looked terrible the rest of the year.
• No luck sprouting Thai chilis.
• No luck sprouting parsley, but of course it is easy and cheap to buy at almost any farmers market or hardware store.
• Surprisingly, my white clover petered out in the hot summer and dry fall, which is one thing that allowed so many other weeds to come in. The roots are probably doing fine and we’ll see if it bounces back in the spring.
• Sunchokes – these came roaring back in one of the big tubs in the spring with no intervention on my part, then gradually started to look really anemic and gross in the summer before dying completely. This doesn’t mean the roots are dead and won’t come back next year, of course.
• White mulberry – one of these bounced up to small tree height in a matter of weeks in late summer and early fall. I don’t want it and need to do something about it ASAP before doing something requires a chain saw rather than a hack saw.
• French sorrel looked anemic and weed-covered in the summer, but seemed to perk back up a bit in the fall.

Plans for next year:

• Sunflowers – just direct seed tons of them, more than the squirrels can eat. Sunflower seeds are cheap. I still like my idea of using them as sort of a biological fence to keep out neighbors’ weeds.
• Miners lettuce – still want to try to get a stand of this established. I may try a combination of direct seeding and transplants.
• Sea kale – the one new seed I plan to order this winter.
• Anise hyssop and mountain mint – I want to take yet another shot at these. Maybe just start a whole bunch of them and try some direct seeding too. And if none of that works, maybe break down and mail-order some plants.
• Thai basil and Thai sweet basil – I’m excited because I saved seeds from plants last fall. If they don’t sprout, these are easy to buy our local Asian market.
• Thai chilis – I want to try getting these to sprout again. With all the recalcitrant seeds that don’t want to sprout, I think I will stop being so stingy with seeds, and start putting large numbers of them in plastic bags with moist paper towels on top of a heat mat.
• Parsley and dill – I like using these to fill in empty spots where I might put perennials in the future, mostly to attract caterpillars. Maybe I’ll put these in the window boxes. I want to try getting parsley to sprout, but if not I’ll just buy some.
• Fennel – like I said, the one I have is doing fine and I just want to move it.
• White mulberry – I’m going to try cutting the monster to the ground and “mulching” it with Epsom salts. Supposedly, these can dry out a tree stump without actually being toxic to anything nearby.

So, next steps are to research how early I can set out some of these plants, and start counting back to when I should be starting the seeds. Fun stuff.