Daytime light is short and temperatures are cold, often frigid. Winter holidays are a pleasant memory. Besides paying the bills, what can a gardener do? You might think there is nothing to do in the garden in January except viewing it through the window, but there are a few preparatory and maintenance tasks. In the Panhandle, we can be blessed with unseasonably mild weather some weeks to perform them.
The path along the Stepping Stones to Success begins in January. Inspiration for gardening is everywhere. Gardening applications can be found in the most unlikely places.

Gardening begins in earnest in March. It’s a windy and cold month, susceptible to weather fluctuations, however the soil is warming and top growth begins to appear. It’s time to dive in. Pace yourself, don’t let gardening activity become pressures, instead of pleasures.

Typically, we have passed the time of our last freeze for this growing season. Hopefully, we won’t be surprised this year. It is still spring, which means the weather still has a certain volatility to it – vacillating between cool and rainy and hot, windy and cold all in one week! But one thing we do know, after Memorial Day, it will be hot.
May 2, 2005 was no exception to spring surprises. A late freeze was forecast for the last 2 days in April. I covered as many plants as I could with row covers and sheets. Our low temperature fell to 35º. Happy that a freeze didn’t occur, I removed the covers. On May 2nd, we woke up to see snow covering the ground, to reach a 2” accumulation, high temperature of 41º, low temperature of about 32º. Visually disturbing, but still minimal damage. By May 10th we reached a high temperature of 90º. The temperature roller coaster continued!
By May, all the heavy garden work could be completed and all that’s left is dropping new plants into the planting hole and applying mulch. April can be pretty frantic; May should be more relaxed.

We’ve reached the dog days of summer. July and August are months of mainly maintenance. Cool season plants appear to be in a holding pattern; growth in parts of your landscape should visibly slow because of the higher temperatures. The plant’s energy is focused on maintaining. After the summer solstice, day length slowly begin to shorten and the garden year begins to tilt towards better times. But just like January and February, preparation begins for the second season in the vegetable garden. Now is the time to prepare some beds for fall and winter vegetable growing.

October weather can be even more glorious than September. In the Panhandle, days are warm and nights cool, sometimes cold. Fall flower blooms are peaking, or just past. Grasses have now fully plumed out, and many roses continue with their last blush. October bears the reward for our efforts throughout the year.
Unless an Arctic cold front plunges way south, we are usually blessed with six to eight additional weeks of blooms and vegetables. The average date of the first frost falls around October 20th, but many years it’s delayed until November.
I view the fall as the beginning of the gardening year, not the end. Indeed, there is no end, just a continuation. Spring preparation begins six-months or more in advance. There really aren’t too many October Tasks except for maintenance, the preparation for winter and of new beds for spring planting.