Katy’s Fair (Usually!) Weather

 How do you make your Katy garden grow?

As an avid gardner who had struggled with the oppressive heat and lack of natural moisture back in Arizona, I have to admit I was relieved to be coming to live in Katy where it is green and wet!  I looked up the statistics online before we even arrived here last fall, and was the thrilled with the promise of a lack of cold weather and bounty of rain.  I told friends that I would be able to “throw the seeds in the ground, and they’ll just grow!”  OK, I’ll admit, I’ve doubted those numbers a lot recently, as this area went through record-breaking cold weather, rainfall, and even heat this past six months!   Needless to say, I’ll tell you that it hasn’t been quite that easy to garden here!  It is, however, not a disappointment to me at all.

I tried a couple of different options this year for planting, just to see how it would go.  I planted seeds inside, in the seedling trays you can find at Wal-mart.  I also planted the same seeds outside by the first week in March.  (I planted bulbs, like the onions, garlic and flowers, earlier, around the beginning of February.)  Interestingly, the outside seeds are doing better as far as strength and tolerance.  The inside seeds grew larger plants, but not as hardy to the weather.  Of course, the typical hardier plants are doing fine from both seed groups, such as the pepper and tomato plants.  It helps, I’m sure, that our yard has an automatic sprinkler system to water my “babies.”  So far, so good, yet I know I have many battles ahead of me with the heat, birds and bugs to deal with as Spring grows on.

What do you think about this past year’s record breaking weather; has it wreaked havoc on your garden?  Did you lose any longstanding favorites to the freezes, or did your plants come out of the storm still kicking?  Am I in for more surprises, or is the weather usually fairly normal around here?  I would love your feedback!

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