What About That Warm Winter?

What about that warm winter and how will it affect my gardening?

By Deb Rierson, Master Gardener

May 2024

That is a big question for all of us as we are so anxious to get out there and plant our veggies.

With no snow cover some of our perennial plants like strawberries and asparagus were at risk if you didn’t cover them with straw or some kind of mulch. Will we get fruit early? Maybe, but perennial plants, shrubs and trees are guided as much by the length of day as they are by temperature and that doesn’t change every year. My strawberries (covered with straw last winter) are looking healthy and beginning to bloom now so they are right on schedule. Last fall I experimented with planting onion starts and covering them with straw. They came through the winter well and I am expecting an early harvest.

And what about insects?

Potato beetle adults overwinter in our gardens and nearby woodlands (think River Road here). They probably did just fine.
Japanese beetle larvae (grubs) spend the winter deep underground so they probably were not affected by the cold.
Other insects and native bees spend their winters in bark, hollow stems, and leaf debris. They don’t make their own heat so they are totally dependent on the temperature. When they awake in the spring is different for each species but don’t expect a drastic change here. While we didn’t have any snow cover for most of the winter we also didn’t have biting cold temperatures. Leaving a pile of leaf litter is good.
The Monarch butterfly count was slightly lower than last year but still remains at 5% of the counts in the 1980’s.

I’ve seen some of you out in the garden planting and other plots that are still waiting to happen. We seem to be out of the woods now, I already have my root veggies in and am planning on planting my tomatoes and peppers the weekend of the 18th.

And FYI: On Sunday morning, May 19, I will be in the garden near the shed from 9-11 a.m. with some free tomato and pepper starts from the Hennepin County Master Gardener Program. (And a few odds and ends too!)