Experiencing Climate Change Locally

I have had a very disappointing growing season in my vegetable garden this year.  My tomato plants only produced about half their normal fruit, and the fruit they did produce was about half the size of normal.  My wax beans formed and then promptly dried up before I could harvest them.  My pole beans climbed their poles more slowly than normal, and they never spread out horizontally along the overhead trellises as usual.  They hardly produced any flowers to develop beans.  My whole harvest was about two dozen beans from ten plants. My bell peppers were laughable. I put the plants out when they were about five inches high, and they stayed five inches high for almost the whole summer, and each plant produced only one or two miniature bell peppers.

What did I do wrong? Is my soil depleted? What was going on?

Of course I knew the extra hot and dry summer must have had something to do with it, but I couldn’t quite figure it all out until I spoke to my dentist.  He is an ambitious gardener.  He plants about 100 tomato plants each year on his acreage, plus many other vegetables. After a routine dental cleaning, I compared notes with him.  He had the same experience with his garden.

He took me back to the spring here, reminding me that March, April, and May were cold and wet, which delayed planting for both of us.  He didn’t even get his tomatoes in until June!  At least I got mine in May.  So the late planting retarded everything.  Then, he explained, the superhot June and July served to shock and stunt the young plants in their formative stages.  I hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense.

Then I also recalled that even at night, this summer, the low temperatures were about 8-10 degrees above normal.  So not enough cooling at night.  Then I also remembered an article I read several years ago about climate change in Ohio.  A climate scientist at the Ohio State University pointed out in an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he had been tracking high temps and low temps, and he found that over several years, the low temps in Ohio had been significantly above normal even when the high temps each day had been in the normal range.  This he attributed to “climate disruption,” i.e., climate change.

Judging by my garden, this year was especially disrupted for gardening. This is how we are experiencing climate change in Northeast Ohio.  I wonder: Are we at a tipping point here?  Can we expect more disrupted growing seasons in the years to come?  Based on what we know of climate science, that seem like a possible—even likely—scenario. 

It is interesting to me to observe that not only was the summer unusually hot and dry, but the spring was delayed by cold, wet weather.  The cold spring and then the hot summer seems to represent a pattern of disruption—not simply warmer weather—but more unstable weather, or should I say more unstable seasons.

That’s the story of my little garden this year.  My garden didn’t produce much this year.  So what?  I can go to the store and buy produce.  But the important question to ask is how is agriculture in general being affected by climate disruption?  What are the implications for food prices and for food supply?  Let’s put a pin in this and keep observing. What will we experience next year and the next several years?

How are you experiencing climate change locally?  Please share your experiences with us. We’d like to publish some of your accounts.  You can send us your accounts to me at: rprosek.factohio@gmail.com