An article in yesterday’s paper said that plant hardiness zones are changing. We’re now in 5b, not 5a, which means that the average annual extreme minimum temperature is -15 to -10 (-26.1 to -23.3 C), not -20 to -15 (-28.9 to -26.1 C). (Note the “extreme”. It is not usually anywhere near that cold here.)

This isn’t surprising to me, since I’ve been sort of ignoring the maps on the backs of seed packets since I started my garden a few years ago. But now it’s official. It helps that we’re at the southern end of the zone, almost in 6a (a balmy -10 to -5). I grew up in 9a (20-25 or -6.7 to -3.9 C), which is why my parents have citrus trees and why I find it acceptable to complain about cold weather, snow, and ice.

The new map lets you look up your location by zip code.

As a side note, this is quite likely the first thing I’ve written about the Agricultural Research Service since I covered the agriculture beat in journalism school.

Anyway. I’ve got a good idea of what I want to do with the gardens next year, so let me lay it out:

• The rhubarb should be big enough that we get to pick some, and I want to plant a second rhubarb.
• Beets! Beet greens make me happy, but I’m giving up on getting beets.
• I’ll try spinach and swiss chard again. Maybe they’ll grow.
• There will definitely be successive plantings of lettuce and mesclun. If J is lucky, more than just the arugula will grow in the late fall.
• I’m not going to bother with beans or peas because they don’t produce enough to be worth it. I’d rather use the space for greens.
• Lots of fennel again.
• Radishes. This year I didn’t plant them until fall; next year I will try them in spring as well.
• I’m going to try putting something (stones or metal) around the tomatoes and eggplant to make them warmer. Hopefully in some fashion that won’t look horrible. If I buy flagstones I could use them elsewhere once we widen the driveway.

In non-food plans, I want to add one or two native prairie flowers to the end of the vegetable bed, where I have one purple coneflower and one…I forget, one of the many yellow things. This year they were just a few leaves, so I hope next year they actually grow tall. And if I’m really ambitious, I’ll put a lattice up to screen the rain barrel from the street.

I’m quite happy with how the fennel turned out this year. It seemed to have a weird growth cycle. First it grew tall stalks with some leaves, and then bloomed. I’ve harvested a bunch of seeds and have been using the leaves in salads, but I was disappointed that like last year, there were no bulbs. Fennel bulbs are the best part of the fennel (or maybe tied with the seeds). I love them raw or roasted.

A couple weeks ago I got the last of the seeds and cut off the stalks. Then I noticed that the plants had started to put up shorter stalks from…bulbs!

So when I noticed everything was frozen on Thursday morning, I cut down almost all the fennel. The leaves are in a paper bag, hopefully drying–the icier leaves went into the compost–and the bulbs are either in the freezer or the fridge, depending on whether they felt frozen or not.

So maybe that’s what fennel usually does, first one tall stalk, then several shorter ones from a bulb. And a freaking long taproot. I guess I’ll find out what happens next year; I suspect it’s dropped a ton of seeds into the garden, since a bunch of seedlings came up this year already.

Anyone have a favorite fennel recipe you want to share?

Last weekend, I picked all the beet greens out of the back, pulled the weeds, and spread compost over the beds. All that’s left in the back is rhubarb, though I’m tempted to put some garlic in.

I also picked the remaining green tomatoes and pulled the plants. One is starting to turn yellow, so I imagine we’ll get a few more. The basil got dug up and potted along with two volunteer dill (or possibly fennel) seedlings. I haven’t tried that before so I’m not sure how long it’ll last, but it seemed worth a shot to have fresh basil for a while longer. I haven’t pulled the last of the fennel plants; I’m waiting for them to finish producing seeds.

The radishes seem happy, but like the beets don’t seem to be making roots. Unlike the beets, their leaves don’t taste good. Some lettuce/mesclun has come up, and if the weather keeps cooperating, we’ll have salad for a little bit longer. Definitely have to remember to try a fall crop again next year.

Still waiting for my bell peppers to change color. If the plant hadn’t been eaten twice, I’m sure we’d have had a few peppers by now.

The mint is already spreading like crazy; I’m very proud of it. At this rate and assuming it survives the winter, weeds are going to be much less of a problem in the front planter. I also transplanted one of the chive plants over there, and left the other one in its pot, for transplanting next spring if it’s alive.

And one of our neighbors is apparently digging up everything in his yard that isn’t native and selling them this weekend. On one hand, I admire that and would like to do the same thing. On the other hand, I’m hoping he has some hostas to get rid of. Maybe if I put them in the planter, rabbits won’t hop up there and eat them.

The back garden just has a few beet greens (going on the assumption that there are no actual beets). Next weekend I should pick them all and then pull the weeds and dump in compost.

In the front, the tomatoes are still producing. I picked two that were turning yellow along with a few green ones in the hope that they’d ripen off the vine and the squirrels wouldn’t get them, but they aren’t doing much. We did get half a red tomato that had ripened on the plant after something took a bite out of it. Someone mentioned that squirrels will eat green tomatoes for the moisture in dry weather, which could explain why they’ve been so much worse this year.

The red bell pepper that got chomped to the ground twice before I put the pot on a platform has two peppers on it, still green. The anaheim pepper has given us a whole two peppers all year–big change from the ridiculous amount of jalapeños et al we got last year.

I’ve picked all the dill seeds and am starting to get fennel seeds. We still have fresh fennel, basil, and chives. And mint, which is already spreading a little. I keep tossing chive seeds in that corner, too, so if I’m lucky next spring weeds won’t be as big a problem as usual.

I planted radishes and lettuce a few weeks ago. The radishes all came up, but there’s not much lettuce. We’ll see how long they survive. None of the radishes I planted earlier made it to radish-hood before succumbing to squirrel digging.

The bell pepper that got eaten to the stem–twice–has recovered and has several little peppers on it. I hope no one eats them before they turn red. The squirrels are avoiding the anaheim.

The dill’s gone to seed, so I’ve been cutting off seed heads. The fennel’s starting to produce seeds as well, and it also has some nice green leaves left. My other herbs are still happy, and the mint is starting to spread already. I might try transplanting the chives to that corner of the garden rather than keeping them in pots for another year.

Beets didn’t do as well this year as last year. The beets themselves are almost big enough to be worth eating, but the greens are pretty old by now. I did pick some for salad, but I think next year it’s back to picking them regularly and forgetting about the roots.

Yesterday I planted more lettuce, mesclun, and radishes, since I can’t stand a bare spot in the garden for long (and they said plant through August). The chard never came up there. Maybe now that it’s cooler at night things will be happier.

Since the last update in late May, we’ve eaten a ton of lettuce, and it’s still growing. Almost everything is starting to bolt, so I’ve been clearing out whole plants and planting swiss chard in the empty spots. I’ve been planting chard and radishes weekly since late June and have seedlings coming up. Right now they’re in random places where I’ve cleared out other things; eventually the chard will replace the lettuce. I rarely have luck with chard but I keep trying it. I want greens.

We’ve gotten about a dozen snow peas including the ones still on the plants. This might be the last year I try peas. They don’t like me.

All the tomato plants have flowers and little green tomatoes, even the mystery volunteer in the front garden. Now I know it makes round tomatoes. The volunteer squashes have bloomed but don’t seem to be producing squash, which is what my non-volunteers usually do as well (and I have at least two kinds of volunteer squash, a bush variety and a climbing variety). I’ve seen one eggplant flower but no fruit. When my parents were here, they brought eggplant from their garden, so I took one out to show to my plants. It didn’t seem to inspire them.

My chives have been dropping seeds into the tomato pot next to them, so there are tiny chives coming up there. I’ve collected seeds and sprinkled them in the flower beds where I want chives, but of course there they’re refusing to grow. I also planted four kinds of mint hoping that will take over, but I think some of the mint won’t survive the winter. If not, next year I’ll put in peppermint. I want herbs to take over from the weeds.

My coneflower and prairie dock are growing. The coneflower had a run-in with a rabbit (which have been helping me eat the lettuce) but has sprouted new leaves. I put these perennials in the vegetable bed; with luck I won’t dig them up in the fall or next spring.
Rabbits have also been eating my red bell pepper and my marigolds. The poor pepper keeps surviving but it’s about 3 inches tall and trying to flower. The marigolds, after I propped their pot up on empty paint cans, might be recovering.

Apparently the rabbits around here are getting smarter or hungrier. Last year they ignored anything in a pot, they stayed away from the marigolds in the flower beds, and they didn’t dig trenches through my lettuce.

The fennel and dill have sprouted. They were slower than everything else, but now they’re everywhere. Though the ones in pots are fighting against the squirrels who keep digging. My plan was to plant some for me and some for the swallowtail caterpillars, so I hope the squirrels leave enough.

One of the red tomato plants has flowers already. And volunteer tomatoes are sprouting everywhere, from last year’s heirlooms I assume. I’m letting some live, though I doubt they’ll grow fast enough to make tomatoes. I need to rethink my compost strategy, since it apparently needs to rot longer and hotter to kill seeds. I’ve got a few volunteer squashes too. 

Tulips are getting ready to bloom, and the hostas are sending up green spikes that need to be caged in chicken wire before the rabbits find them.

On to vegetables. Everything is planted, though it’s early. Two weeks ago I put in peas, spinach, beets, mixed lettuces, fennel, and dill seeds. Everything’s up except the spinach and the peas in front (different kind of peas than in back, and of course I don’t remember which are which), and it looks like the fennel and dill didn’t sprout. But the whole garden is covered in little tiny green things that are probably weeds, so it’s hard to tell. My rhubarb is up, too. This year we get to eat a little bit of it.

Last week someone at work was selling tomato seedlings, and then when I went to buy pots to put them in, the store had their plants in…so now I’ve got orange and red bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, two different types of eggplant, and 5 different tomatoes – two small red types, a lemon drop (yellow), a black krim, and a green zebra. I like the names. I hope they’ll do better than last year’s tomatoes. I’ve put them all in pots on the opposite end of the yard from the vegetable bed, where I think there might be a little bit more sun.

In May I’ll investigate the state of the spinach, dill, and fennel and replant.