When the beginning of the year starts badly, it is hard to catch up. Garden season 2025 is mostly over, and the results were deeply affected by the very moody weather.

The rain came too little too late

Summer continued with the heat. Although we did receive the average amount of rain during August, nothing can compensate for the terrible drought in June and the beginning of July. The biggest issue with the rain we did get is that it comes in huge downpours, and the soil doesn’t have time to absorb it. This has been happening for the past 3 years. The lack of snow during winter, very dry springs, and moderately wet summers and autumns don’t accumulate enough moisture to keep the soil wet. On the surface, the soil gets muddy, but as soon as you dig a couple of cm below, the soil is completely dry. We’re missing those days when we used to have entire weeks of rain. Now, most rain comes in showers and storms that rage for 10 minutes and then stop. The entire year, there were no days when I couldn’t go to the garden, except immediately after the rain. There is no slippery mud anywhere. In these conditions, it is hard to grow anything.

Most of the plants gave us much less to harvest than in 2024. We harvested almost 1/3 less than in 2024. The lack of water is especially visible on blackberries, which gave us 30kg last year, while this year we got only 3kg. The amount of berries was almost the same, but they were completely dry, without any juice inside. I couldn’t squeeze anything to make juice. The whole berries were just skin and some dry flesh. Eventually, I gave up and stopped harvesting them; I left them to the birds, which also refused to eat them.

The mulch helped

The mulch, which we got in late July, helped, and the plants started recovering, but the extreme heat during May and June pushed our vegetable season for almost a month and a half. Potatoes, which we dug up during July in 2024, were still completely green and not flowering throughout August. We ended up harvesting them in late September.

Beans, which usually grow like mad in my garden, were very late. The ones sown in May came at the same time as the ones sown in July. We harvested 8kg, which is a decent amount.

Cabbages, which I’ve tried sowing again, actually did well. I’ve sown very early seasoned cabbages and they actually managed to make heads. They weren’t too big and could have grown even bigger, except they started bursting, so I ended up harvesting all of them.

The winner of the season were the tomatoes. We’ve harvested 37kg. The best tomato this year was Green Zebra. This year I went with mostly small-sized tomatoes since last year we didn’t have time to ripe any bigger varieties. This actually worked excellently, and we had a very nice tomato harvest. How many did I store for winter? Not a single tomato. Everything was eaten fresh. I think we have a tomato addiction.

Preparing for the winter

The middle of September brought us the usual cold. Morning temperatures already dropped below 5°C, which stops most of the plant growth, and our season ended abruptly. We ended up rushing with the garden clean-up. October brought the first morning 0°C temperature, and since then, temperatures have been jumping from summer to winter temperatures and back to winter. For now, there is no snow, but with the cold this early, this could be one of the snowier years.

So during October, we managed to clean most of the garden. Since we have mulched the garden, I will not be digging the garden. We still need to collect leaves and cut the grass before winter, so we will use it as more mulch. The beds have been fertilized, and with more mulch, the soil should be good next year without digging.

We’ve also started preparing the forest part of the yard to make another small garden. “The stronger half” is installing a new fence, and I’ve made 4 new beds for flowers and vegetables. Once we manage to completely fence the yard, we’ll think about the real purpose for each part of the garden. Right now, we’re just testing the areas.

During November, I plan to finish all the outside work, December is too cold for vegetables here. I will put my house greenhouse to work and start some microgreens, and once we get closer to Christmas, I will start my new seedling season. We’ve planned a huge amount of seedlings for next year, and we need to start early to grow them all.