Pros and cons of a mild winter

[Smiles Jr.]

I don't want to hijack Hoodat's thread so I'll start this one.

Since so many of us are having an extremely mild winter (so far) I'm wondering what the consequences will be. Yesterday I was out in the back yard working on a barn roof and by 2 PM I was down to a tee shirt. Crazy for early February. We usually have cold, snowy, dark, gloomy days at this time each year.

I tapped one of the sugar maple trees just to test the flow and in three hours I had a gallon of sap. I usually cannot even think of tapping trees until the end of February. I'm not ready for this. I had planned to build a new wood fired evaporator out by my workshop but I think it's too late for that now. I hope the trees don't pop open any buds soon as the syrup will get bitter as soon as the buds open.

My Brussels sprouts are still growing from last year. I just harvested a gallon bucket of them again two days ago and they are looking good. DW's flower beds are dormant but still green and they look like they are going to wake up any day now. I inspected the apple trees in the orchard and they do not seem to be any different than any other year at this time.

My biggest concern is that plants will begin to wake up only to have one or two hard freezes before spring. That happens often here but this year is extreme.

What are your thoughts on this situation?

 

[rebbetzin]

We had lots of cool rainy weather in December. But, no rain to speak of in Jan. The African daisies are blooming, for us that means usually winter is over, and Spring is soon to come. I have had a great crop of lettuce. My little Goji Berry trees are starting to leaf out, and so are my pomegranate trees. I have an apricot tree in the congregation garden, I will be over there tomorrow to see if it has any buds forming. My Meyer Lemon over there is doing very well, we only had one night that was about 27 degrees. Though the news said it was to be in the low 30's tonight. I hope it doesn't freeze! I have lots of new flowers coming up!

We have such hot, dry summers. This has been a pretty good winter for us.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The grass and weeds are not all dead or dormant. It's nice to have a little green color in the lawn and have growing things for the chickens to eat, but grass and weeds are already growing and establishing roots in the garden. We haven't had a whole lot of rain but it has stayed too wet to work much in the garden. How hard is that going to be to clean out so I can plant? I prepare an area in the fall for my real early spring planting since for me "as soon as the ground can be worked" for my cool weather stuff usually has more to do with the ground getting dry enough instead of the ground thawing. And that dry window is often pretty short. I want that head start. This year, that area has weeds and grass growing in it.

When do you plant stuff? I could have had cabbages, broccoli, and spinach growing, with them just needing minimal frost protection on the few cold nights we've had. But one normal hard freeze and I'd lose it. I feel like I missed an opportunity.

Have the insects really been killed off as normal or has an unusually large breeding population maybe made it through the winter? Are we in for a heavy bug year? As I mentioned in another thread yesterday, my wife heard someone say they had a housefly! In February!!!!

We had a late frost last year and I got practically no fruit. I have not seen any fruit trees break out into buds this year yet, but some could be swelling and getting ready to. I like my fruit. That reminds me, I need to do my dormant oil spraying.

To have a silver lining, you need a cloud. The weather has been nice to deal with, but I wonder if we'll pay? I think I'm usually more optimistic than that sounds, and we should enjoy life while we can. I saw a quote recently that I'll mangle. Do you know how to make God laugh? Plan the future. I don't mean that in any sacreligious way. WE don't know what is coming and we can't change it anyway. Just enjoy it while you can.

 

[digitS']

People keep saying that there's no normal, now. I hardly know what to think, Smiles. The Weather Service had this apology about predicting a La Nia while pointing out that 20% of the time, or whatever, the weather will be completely opposite of usual. Yeah, I can usually predict weather by the hour, too.

This part of the world seems to have 3 month seasons, almost as we are supposed to. This winter has really lacked extremes. I believe there was only 1 night in the single digitS'! We have had other "open" winters but, after living here for over 40 years, a winter like this is beyond my memory. But, every season is a time of change. Winter of '10/'11 was fairly mild . . . and then "the change" was so limited, we almost missed spring!! Some of those months of late winter/early spring were the coolest on record! So, we may have gone from coolest to warmest.

When global climate change 1st began to get a lot of attention that I noticed -- that 1st year, we had a very wet summer. I thought, "Hey, this isn't so bad! At least we will get some rain during the growing season around here!" Probably, the very next summer we were back to getting about 1" of rain over the entire 3 months of summer .

What happens when we have a warm spring and hot summer? With plenty of water in our aquifer - we can have a great growing season!!! Chasing sprinklers and hoses around can nearly run me to death! Still, seasons like 1998 and 2005 resulted in bumper crops! Having that early season warmth made all the difference for me!

Resources? This is a glacial valley. Oh, there aren't any glaciers here now - hardly glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park. Still, the valley is filled with prehistoric glacial till . . . gravel. The snow pack must be below normal but much of that water will not be flowing in our surface rivers - it will be underground. It moves slowly and is available thru the summer, Hallelujah!

Planning, Ridgerunner? If the opportunity presents itself, I hope to be ready . . .

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. ~ Wadsworth

If you've got x, y, & z to work with (oh, how I'd like to have a sugar maple tree ) -- what can you do with them if things happen as they did in '98, or 'o5, or '83? Can't remember '83? Were NOT around in '83 to have memories? Yeah, well - probably doesn't matter much - just try to use what you've got! And, remember from here on out - yeah, remember that it is not a crime to get old. Whatever else it is not, I can't remember . . .

Steve

 

[hoodat]

One of the consequences of our mild Winter is that the first flush of flea beetles is early. They are doing a number on the seedlings I planted in the ground as soon as they pop up. If you can get by the first flush you get some relief as the adults die off and the new generation goes through the larval stage. That lets the seedlings get big enough to withstand a little flea beetle damage.

 

[vfem]

Now we had an unusually mild winter as recent as 2006 here. My husband and I were talking about it the other night, because we spent our wedding anniversary at Topsail Beach that February and it was 74 degrees that day. They were talking about this on the news when we got into the conversation. That January was actually 2 degrees milder on average then this January was for us. This past month and winter is in the top 10 mildest on record, however, it only fell in at #9. So with that in mind, I'm not going to panic but I'm concerned for how the fruits of my labors will work out for 2012.

My joys of this are I got my cool season items out early. When I wait until the 'appropriate' time in the spring, or late winter here, it gets too warm to fast and I lose a lot of my spring plantings... or many of my greens go bitter before I get to enjoy very many. It seems wasteful when I miss out on more then 50% of my harvest because its such a short cool season here. So this year I'm taking the risk of planting more now and hope for better success like I get in the fall, early winter, most years.

Then the negatives! We have these wonderful fruit trees out that the buds are confused and swelling already. We didn't have enough freeze hours for the trees as it is, so I don't think we're going to have good harvest at all this year. They're still young, but short mild winters are not good for production either way. I'm concerned about over wintered diseases and fungi thriving quickly in the spring months due to the mild winter as well.

I do not think the world is coming to end by any means because we've had a mild winter... especially with the winter being the exact opposite in Europe. The US is quick to forget the rest of the world and how things work to balance this planet.

What I would like more of is wetness. I could have REALLY used a wet winter, even if it wasn't snowy and cold. Our pond is drying up and we have less then 3 feet of water left (Its down 6-7 feet from its high!). I'm very concerned how it will affect my ducks, and we'll likely loss our fish its so well stocked with. May enough add to the bug problem next year with this winter.

Which is another thing I'm annoyed with... I have NOT had a bug free winter. There have been spiders active OUTSIDE and flies all over... we've had beetles and moths constantly. Even lady bugs were seen out last weekend. (Honey bees too!)

It's enough to make me uncomfortable....

 

[skeeter9]

You are so right about the bugs. We have had flies, fleas, ticks, etc all winter, even with the daily frosts. Last weekend I noticed that there were tons of lady bugs out. Seems great, but I'm concerned that if the weather turns at all normal the lady bugs and other beneficial insects will be killed off.

It is so very tempting to take advantage of the beautiful weather and start my garden early this year, but along with the warm days, we are having frost every single morning. Also, I just know that as soon as I take the plunge and get some things going, our weather will change and I will lose everything. Just not sure if I want to take the chance.

One of my main concerns is that we haven't had enough rain or snowpack to replenish the groundwater. Around here we depend on the groundwater to keep our trees alive during the very long, hot summer - we get no rain from about April/May until about late October/November. Also, there is the very scarey chance that our well will go dry. Not only do we humans depend on our well for water, but we have pets and livestock, as well as a little bit of landscaping. There's no way we can afford to drill a new well right now.

On a bigger scale, we live in a huge farming/ranching area. With this weird weather, the citrus farmers are suffering, and later in the growing season, the other farmers will be lucky to get enough water to raise their crops at all. Our food prices could go sky-high, which could in turn push prices of other things up. With no rain, the ranchers don't have grazing for their cattle, and will have a hard time watering them in the summer. hay prices are crazy and people are dumping anything that eats like crazy right now, so what is that going to do to our beef prices? If beef prices go nuts, then that will drive up the prices of other meats, etc, etc, etc.

Am I concerned? You'd better believe I am. While I am really enjoying not having to tramp through the mud to feed morning and night, and being able to go outside in a t-shirt at this time of year, for us, the likely consequences are a little scarey. The bottom line, though, is that there isn't a darn thing anybody can do about it, so I'm going to make the most of the beautiful weather and deal with any consequences as they appear. Life is just too short to place too much emphasis on worrying about what-if's and miss out on what's right before us!

 

[catjac1975]

I am worried that we will have a bumper crop of unwanted bugs. We could lose fruit blossoms as you describe, and perhaps spring bloomers,tulips etc.

 

[skeeter9]

Definitely, catjac!

 

[so lucky]

As I was reading this thread, a big fat mosquito wandered in front of my computer screen, for the second time this evening! I got him this time, tho. Mosquitoes on Feb. 4th? Really? (No global warming here!)