A look back at this year's gardening season

And suddenly, just like that, summer is over, although you can't call what we had this year, summer. It was just a temperate rainy season with very little sun. In previous years, there has been a gradual movement toward autumn, with September days that have a hint of autumn in the air. Not so this year--just rain and more rain. Temperatures during September stayed mostly in the low 60s, so I cannot complain about that. But there was no real summer this year, and there has been no real autumn either. Now it's just cold. In some places right outside of Oslo, it's already snowed. This year's gardening season was less than stellar due to the rainy summer. The outdoor tomatoes rotted, as did three of my ten pumpkins. The string bean plants did not do well either. Too much rain and too little sun will rot plants, since the roots never have a chance to dry out. Or they develop mold, as did my outdoor tomato plants, producing tomatoes that were mottled and mealy. The greenhouse tomato plants did fine; that's how I know that the amount of rain we had this year was no good for the outdoor tomato plants.

We got the allotment garden in 2016, and since then, not one successive season has been the same. It is impossible to predict from year to year how the next season will go. I imagine that causes farmers much consternation; a farmer's life is far from idyllic or romantic, that's for sure. Last year, the summer was very warm and there was very little rain; that was true for most of Western Europe. But it was a banner year for the garden. Looking back, the 2016 gardening season was the best in terms of a good balance of sun and rain. I know that because the pumpkins grew well, and to a good size. This year, I've gotten one large pumpkin; the rest are small to medium-sized. The only plants that produced well this year were the zucchini plants--six large zucchinis from three plants. But zucchinis grow fast and for some reason were not affected by the overly-moist soil as were the pumpkins. Strange, because together with other types of squashes and pumpkins, the zucchini belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo, and you might think that they would all react similarly to the weather conditions. The berry plants all produced fairly well this year; berry plants seem to be quite hardy. The only problem was a blister aphid infection on the red currant bushes that sucked the juices out of the leaves so that they ended up looking wrinkled and blistered, hence the name. But the infection did not affect the actual berry production, which was something to be thankful for. 

The Folva potatoes did well this year, so next year I will plant more of them. Based on this year's experiences, I've decided that next year I will plant potatoes, zucchinis, pumpkins, and will try string beans again. If they don't do well, I'll skip them in the future. I'll only plant greenhouse tomatoes. In the end, you end up planting what works, because in truth, it is heartbreaking to watch what you've nurtured from seed end up dying due to frost, too much rain, too little rain, slugs, or mold. I know that how I feel pales in comparison to what farmers must feel when the weather is unpredictable. For example, this past April was a warm one, and the apple orchards started to bloom early. Then came May, with several weeks of cold temperatures, and the resulting frost killed the apple tree blossoms and killed the chances for the trees to produce any apples. The farmers who were interviewed were heartbroken. This is the ruthlessness of nature. It doesn't care what lives or what dies--there are no feelings one way or the other. It is us humans who feel sadness or elation at watching our plants die or grow, depending on the unpredictable weather. You either develop a thick skin and continue to plant the same things, or you learn and plant only the things that work.