Kim, See there, you have your own book on gardening in our crazy climate.

I keep all my notes in my head, which will only work until my aging brain starts forgetting more than it remembers. I'm fairly sure that is happening all too often already, as all the years sure are starting to run together more and more in my mind.

I used to be able to remember exactly which tomato varieties I grew in which year and how well they produced in each year, and I'm not sure I'm remembering that kind of stuff as well now in as much detail as I did 10 or 20 years ago.

I have tried keeping notes, like planting notes and canning logs and such, in spiral notebooks and that works until the notebook gets lost, or chewed up by a puppy, or until some other disaster befalls it. With the canning logs, I keep perfect records in the first few weeks, and then as time goes on and I get ever busier with the canning, I get to the point where I don't even try to write in the log. I'm just happy if I get the date on each jar so I know its age. Some summers, I'm astonished when I look at the calendar to note the current date and realize I've lost a whole month of summer from just being too busy and not really grasping how quickly it flies by.

My goal this summer is to can less, which sounds crazy, but I need to cut back some and try to have more time to be outside enjoying the garden more.

Dawn

I found OK gw looking for gardeners in a hot windy drought year.

Dawn I wish I could keep it all in my head. DTM,harvest time, planting times germination times soil Temps and what did Dawn say about carrots...

All swim around in my head. Lol

Its kind of OCD but I had piles of papers that I organized and put into binders. I love my new system. It's almost as good as having Dawn on speed dial.

If I had grown up gardening it might come more naturally huh? But I am thankful I garden now and able to learn from y'all

I think it will come naturally after you've been doing it longer. As with anything else, nothing teaches like experience.The caveat is that you learn gardening by doing it in the weather and climate conditions you have.

Given that our weather and climate swing from one extreme to another, though, it seems like we never really have the same weather year twice. The closest thing I had in my memory bank on dealing with excessively wet weather was from 2010, 2007 and 2004 so, to some degree, I knew what to expect in 2015, and yet even our wettest year since we moved here (which until now had been 2010) had about 27-28" less rain than 2015, so nothing really had prepared me for the sort of rain we had this year. I've got tons more experience dealing with drought and dry conditions than dealing with repeated flooding and perpetually wet conditions. After this past year, I feel ready to cope with any amount of rain that falls, which probably means we'll end up with dry weather this summer and I'll be searching my memory for techniques that worked best in years like 2003, when our rainfall was under 19", or 2005, when it was around 23".

I'd like to have two consecutive years with similar weather so I can use what worked in Year 1 again in Year 2, but that's just not what usually happens here. It kinda helps with planning, though, because you learn to plan for the sort of weather next year that you didn't have this year, and that tends to work out pretty well. Sometimes El Nino seems to be a game-changer by spanning parts of two calendar years, but the one thing that enduring El Nino in my location has taught me is that even if winter/spring are very rainy partially due to El Nino, summer is usually just as hot and dry as it can be once the El Nino conditions abate. It is like there's lots of water until you really need it in summer, and then Mother Nature abruptly turns off the faucet.

The basic gardening techniques that bring success are the same in every year, but it is the adjustments you make to cope with the extremes---from flooding for weeks and weeks on end to maybe going 2 or 3 months with almost no rainfall in summer---that ultimately determines the success of any given gardening year. It would be wonderful to know in advance what the new season will bring, but we don't, so I just guess what I think will happen and plant accordingly. Luckily, most years are not at either extreme of heat/drought or cool/rainy but instead fall somewhere in between.

Two types of weather years I hope we never see again (though I am sure we will) are the extreme drought/heat of 2011 and the extreme rainfall and flooding of 2015.

I'd like to have a 2004 or a 2010 again. Both were plenty rainy and somewhat cooler than average and the garden overall did really well. 2010 had some challenges with far too much rain at potato and onion planting time and 2004 had a huge pest population but both still were very productive years overall. 2004 in particular was a lot of fun and we had friends over at our house all the time that summer, both in and out of the garden. When one of those friends died very quickly following a brief battle with brain cancer early in 2005, our memories of all the time spent with him and his family the previous summer became very precious memories indeed. Not only were he, his wife, his kids and his grandkids over at our house a lot during the summer of 2004, but when his mom and sister were visiting from out-of-state, they came over every day to harvest veggies. His mother, in particular, adored all the heirloom tomatoes, especially "Nebraska Wedding" and we all just had so much fun in the garden that summer. His grandson loved harvesting "Blacktail Mountain" watermelons and putting them in the pickup to take home to Grandpa and Grandma's house to eat, and he loved gathering hen and guinea eggs for the same reason.

When I think of a lifetime of gardening experiences, including many years of my dad's, grandfather's and several aunt's' and uncle's gardens, while all of them are precious to me, none of them touched me in quite the same way that last garden summer with Ken's family did. Of course, while we were living that summer and enjoying that garden, none of us knew that it would be the last summer that all of us would be together. That year he and I saw a mated pair of golden eagles several times, mostly because we spent tons more time outdoors than everyone else that year. Isn't that an incredible experience to share with a friend? I've only rarely seen even one eagle flying overhead since then, so the memory of seeing that pair several times is really burned into my memory. Gardening is about so much more than planting, growing and harvesting, and the summer of 2004 stands out in my mind as a reminder that Gardening is Life. To me, gardening is not so much about the technical aspects of growing stuff....it is more about just the experience of doing it and the experience of sharing it with others. I think that was my main lesson from 2004---gardening is meant to be shared with all your friends and family. Gardening isn't just a thing that I do---it is an integral part of who I am and it is woven into the daily fabric of our lives.

I also think sometimes we don't realize how much our gardening life kind of "rubs off" on other folks around us. Our son is (ever so slowly, bit by bit) building his own house on our property and paying for it as he goes. When his house is complete, he'll be mortgage-free. His plan then is (perhaps not so shockingly) to put in his own organic garden and orchard and raise as much of his own food as he can. I have to confess that there were times in his fast-food-laden teenaged years where I did not picture him growing his own organic garden, but his past of having a mom who gardens got him through that period and he has a great appreciation once again for being able to cook with organic, home-grown ingredients. Your son and grandson will learn from gardening right along beside you, and it is the most wonderful experience to share. My son was always in the garden with me as a child until he turned a certain age and got his driver's license, and then he disappeared for a few years. He never has forgotten everything he learned in all those gardening years, though, and to this day he can walk into the garden and know exactly what is going on at a glance, and I'm not really sure he even realizes that sometimes. I think he still retains a lot of gardening know-how in his brain even if he doesn't realize it all is still there. Ha! I've been brainwashing him into becoming an organic gardener all along and he didn't even realize it.

You are so right. Gardening is so much more than dates and quantities.

When I am in the garden with my grandson, it is me. I am home. More than anywhere else.

I feel the need to keep details written because well my memory sometimes. And I am sure we probably won't have that much rain this year. I have put on my calendar early and late sowing dates. One thing I learned is to be flexible.

The memories you are making with your little man in the garden are so precious. When our son was married, he had a step-daughter and she loved to be out in the yard and garden with me. Of course, I hoped that he'd stay married forever and she always would be a part of our lives. Sadly, that didn't happen and I really miss my little gardening buddy (and our wonderful former daughter-in-law too), but we do stay in touch with them and she is growing up into a lovely young lady. She has spent a lot of time in the garden with her great-grandfather, so at least she still has a garden to enjoy....and she'll always have her memories of her time with her great-grandpa even after he is gone.

My memories of having my son in the garden with me over the decades are very precious ones, and you know, even in his high school years, when he had largely abandoned the garden to drive his car and chase girls (imagine that!), he was shocked when a couple of female friends from school stopped by one August and fell in love with the sunflowers in my veggie garden. Apparently he had no idea that flowers (other than prom flowers) were appealing to girls, and I think it made him see the garden in a whole new light that summer too.

My garden also was a real hotbed of activity in the high school years when all the school kids had to do their insect collection for biology. Our son and his friends could spend a relatively short time in my garden and get all the insects they needed (and more than they needed). We'd pop the insects into zip-lock bags and I'd take them up to the house and put them in the deep freeze. The kids, then, would take home their bags of frozen bugs and then they'd spend hours on the phone and on the internet identifying the insects and talking back and forth. We helped a ton of kids get their insect collections done back in the day, and even those are very fun memories now.

Much of the time when our kids were small we lived 12 miles from where I taught and had the garden. I tried to help them into gardening. I'd spend lunch breaks working up garden spots for them to plant. Then, on the weekend, when they'd come out, I'd have them plant. They'd be done in 15 minutes and ... off to play. When we arrived back in the USA we put in a garden and the kids helped some. But they were busy. Now that they're grown, it's interesting, they all proudly consider themselves to be gardeners and, more importantly, they are working at it as they find time. It does rub off.

That's the best part isn't it. Influencing the next generation in such a positive way. My little man enjoys every second outdoors. He opens my eyes to new things too that I don't notice. And he makes me slow down which is a good thing.

This year I am making a cucumber house instead of sunflowers. I can't wait.till we get back in the sunny soil.

Kim,

Are your notes in electronic form? I'd like to see them.

Johnny

Oh, the cucumber house will be such fun. I love mine.

When Chris and our nieces and nephews were little, I used cedar limbs to build bean tee pees, and then every year we grew different things on those teepees---mostly everything but beans, which I grew in a spot where kids were less likely to trample them. We grew lots of cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, Armenian cukes, mini pumpkins like Jack-Be-Little, ornamental gourds, southern peas (except they attract yellow jackets while in bloom so the kids may abandon the tee pees while they are in bloom), sugar snap peas, scaret runner beans, white and purple hyacinth bean vines, moonflower vines, morning glories, and many other vines including firecracker vine. Oh, and cherry tomatoes, which had to be tied to the tee pees since they don't climb on their own. And, icebox melons. Those were fun times.

Of course, I grew sunflower houses too, and my favorite sunflower house wasn't a sunflower house. It was an ornamental broomcorn house, with purple hyacinth bean vines climbing the broom corn. It was a rainy year, I suppose, as I remember the broom corn easily growing 10-12'. Then the beans climbed to the top of the corn and the stalks sort of drooped down, covered in hyacinth bean vine blooms. It looked gorgeous from the roadway, and literally stopped traffic. From the road it looked like wisteria vines blooming out of season and we got lots of questions about how we made the wisterias bloom in August.

There's just so many ways to have fun gardening with kids. And with dogs. Every dog we've ever had always has believed the sunflower houses and bean tee pees were for them, not for the kids, so we had to teach all of them to share the space with one another.

My Dog Fred loved the shade of the sunflowers too. I am going to use 3 - 16 foot cattle panels for my cucumbers so it will be a good size. My 7500 Sq foot garden is mainly going to be produce with pots of herbs and flowers and mint. This year I AM GOING to grow mint. I refuse to be a mint murderer again.

No Johnny my notes are all hand written and some word documents that I have printed off and compiled into a binder or 2 OK maybe 5. I have an addiction to paper so when I saw an article or chart I liked I printed it. Many notes from Dawns advice and others. Other people's experience is most helpful since I don't have many years myself

I put together a journal keeper for this year based on last year and it's really an easy way for me to keep track of what worked and what didn't. I forced myself last year to write stuff down and I am so glad I did. It helps to know approximately what when and how.