The 3 season year!

[veggiechicken]

Conventionally, the year has 4 seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter amd there are different opinions on when each starts and ends - calendar, meteorological, solstice/equinox - take your pick.
As you would expect, I'm different. My year has 3 seasons, each of 4 months and roughly linked to calendar months.

Season 1 is March - June until the Summer solstice, while daylight hours are lengthening. A time for sowing summer crops - tomatoes beans and squashes etc. For setting up propagators and greenhouses a time of promise.

Season 2 is after the solstice to October - daylight hours are diminishing. Time for harvesting and preserving, when all your good efforts are rewarded. Also of sowing for winter, especially the veg that prefer short days, and those that overwinter.

Season 3 is November - February. Short days and long nights. Time for planning, tidying and preparation and putting your feet up with a seed catalogue.

I'm quite excited at moving into Season 2. I've packed away all the spring sown seeds until next year and am pulling out the oriental veg, fennel, spinach and spring cabbage seeds in readiness for the next round of sowing.

Am I the only one who thinks like this - or am I as nutty as you keep telling me?

[Thelma Sanders]

If we disregard the weather (after all weather disregards the seasons somewhat nowadays) your version makes perfect sense

You making sense that's worrying, isn't it

[HoneyChild]

I maybe tend to think of Feb-March for sowing seeds (peppers, tomatoes). Nothing really grows that much unless under LED lights.

Then suddenly when May arrives everything romps away and it's a race to get everything potted up. I think May is for Mayhem.

June settles down as I've basically done everything the previous month. I can pretty much just do some maintenance, e.g. watering and weeding. Plus some harvesting for salads.

Then later in the season is when I'm harvesting lots of tomatoes and making chutney.

By the time october arrives I lose all interest in the garden as frosts have killed most things and I just wait for February again.

[nickdub]

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you're different VC, how you divvy up the year has no bearing on it from my perspective. :-)

[mothhawk]

I like it! It seems to make perfect sense as TS says. it also matches up to the beekeeping year -

March to summer solstice, building up colonies, making honey, checking for swarming activity;
Summer solstice to October, harvest honey, check bee health and treat if necessary, replace or let the bees replace any ailing queens;
November to March, clean and tidy equipment, order new, repair damaged kit, plan next year's strategy

[veggiechicken]

If we disregard the weather (after all weather disregards the seasons somewhat nowadays) your version makes perfect sense

You making sense that's worrying, isn't it

I like it! It seems to make perfect sense as TS says. it also matches up to the beekeeping year -

Very worrying indeed! Either I'm sensible or you 2 are as nutty as I am.

[mothhawk]

P'raps it's catching.....

[Mikey]

I would make it simpler than that and say there are 2 seasons, the growing season and the dormant season and they are different for each of us.

We all have a different latitude and longitude which affect our own individual time of day. When you reach 12 hours of daylight you enter what I affectionately call the growing season and when you leave it you are in the dormant season. For me last year the seasons were as follows;

Growing Season
18th March - 26th September

Dormant Season

26th September - 18th March

This is quite a useful Tool as it shows the time of daylight wherever you live. Check when you reach 12 hours and see how this correlates with when you start planting.

I'm not saying you can't grow outside these dates, as you can but I would be fighting nature in doing so.

[mothhawk]

I think temperature has more to do with it than daylight. My sister lives in Florida and has exactly the same 12 hour daylight period as me, but she can grow year round.....

[Mikey]

Good point MH, I've amended my post to be relative to me.

This year I was covered in snow on the 18th of March so I didn't start growing, I actually started planted when the Oak and Ash started to show leaf. Which was a good 3 1/2 weeks later this year.

[Small pumpkin]

I like it. I don't do it, but I like it. I may end up working to this calendar. As I'm very slowly dipping my toe into the sea of winter veg growing! Thanks to a crazy sprout growing challenge ( VC's fault )along with a couple of different varieties of cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli. I've even managed to do some repeat sowings. That's a first! And seems to successful so far .

So yes I like a 3 season year. When you've designed the calendar VC, I'll buy one

[Chippy Minton]

I think we've moved into a 2 season year, wet and dry. It's like a dustbowl here! Still, getting my step count up lugging the can about....

[Penellype]

I've always reckoned that the year has 3 seasons - winter from mid October to mid-April, spring from mid April to mid July and autumn from mid July to mid October. This philosophy comes from spending years working outside. However this year the spring season seems to have been summer, and it was spring that didn't exist.

I like your thinking though VC - it does in fact make sense.

[veggiechicken]

Penellype - you're the 3rd person to say it makes sense.
You're ruining my reputation.

[SarrissUK]

It makes perfect sense to me too! In fact, it might be the answer to a frustration I have about my seeds and how I store them. They're in alphabetical order right now, for ease of finding particular seeds, but it's not very practical in terms of knowing what to sow when. So I might just rearrange my seeds into two, as you say VC!