Overall the 2022 gardening season was very successful, the garden did very well. Southern Ontario had a dry summer, which means I am very grateful for the irrigation system in my garden. For more details on that check out this post. A dry summer meant that I had fewer issues such as blight and the tomato plants lasted until frost. As with every gardening season, I learnsed some new things and there is room for improvement next year. Here is my 2022 gardening season in review.
What Went Well
- Tomato Trellises – This is the first year that I’ve used twine and tomato clips to trellis my tomatoes. I really liked this system and it gave me a lot of flexibility. I plan to write a more detailed post in the near future about this.
- Irrigation – As I mentioned, my irrigation system was the MVP of the garden this summer. This saved me considerable time watering the garden and I didn’t have to worry when I was busy or away.
- New Crops
- Sweet Corn – This was the first year that I have grown sweet corn in my garden and the results were pleasantly surprising. I enjoyed that it was easy to pick a few cobs a night to enjoy with dinner.
- Fennel – I had tried fennel one time previously and was not successful. This year the plants did great; grew like crazy and were low maintenance. This is definitely something I will try again.
Areas for Improvement
Here are some of the areas where I ran into issues this summer. I hope that by sharing this information, you can learn from some of my mistakes and not have these issues yourself.
- Germination
- Indoors – Even before the gardening season started I was running into germination issues. It took a couple of times to get the seeds to start and develop their first set of leaves. I believe this was connected to the soil I was using and is a good reminder to make sure to use quality potting soil products.
- Outdoors – I also had issues with germination when direct seeding succession plantings for short-season vegetables like lettuce and radishes. I think this was linked to the dry summer and the seeds needing more moisture. As I’ve mentioned before drip irrigation is great for deep watering but doesn’t do a great job of watering at the surface where the seeds are. To resolve this in the future more frequent hand watering was needed in this case.
- Tomato Starts – Once I was able to get the tomato starts established I ran into issues with what I believe was damping off. The stem of the tomato just above the soil level began to shrivel and turn brown. I was able to save some plants by planting them very deep when I transplanted them, but others I was not able to save. To avoid this next year I will be sure to clean and sanitize my seed starting pots as well as use quality potting soil.
- Squirrels – This was the first year that I had strawberries in my garden and it appears that the squirrels really enjoyed them. They were also enjoying my ground cherries as well. For next year I need to work on netting or covers to keep the squirrels out of these plants.
I hope you enjoyed this 2022 gardening season in review. Every gardening season teaches me something new and is an opportunity for learning. Leave a comment below about what worked well in your garden this year.
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments” – Janet Kilburn Phillips
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