Oh boy are we ever changing things up this year, but perhaps not for climate reasons.
Seems as the older kids grow up, they move out. Leaving along with these new adults are their food preferences and the production and storage requirements change.
Let's take an example of tomatoes. With 2 adults, 2 teens, and 2 preteens, we used to make pretty large batches of pasta twice per week. To support this we had 2-3 dozen tomato plants each year for canning up.
Now, with the last teenager moving out and the little ones having changing food preferences, I am looking at 1 smaller batch of pasta per week. I would be surprised if we go with more than 6 plants this year.
Another thing we are looking at reducing(even eliminating for a year) is green beans. Mostly because last year we had a huge bumper crop and still have countless jars of them in the pantry. We will likely replace the green beans with peas this year (cause we love peas and don't have any in storage).
With the shrinking family, and the amount of storage we have put up over the past few years, our garden this year will be mostly for fresh eating with a little bit for storage.

Hi Denob, Now that is a very interesting development that I had not thought of to tell the truth.. I can see your point for sure.. I will admit I grow fresh eating peas but I do not grow canning pea's or frozen pea's.. Its not worth giving up that much garden space for the little return on them.

I do understand about not going things in larger amount if you already have one or two years worth of them canned up in storage that need to be used, then it makes total sense to just grow for fresh eating.

I don't know if "Climate Change" is overly responsible for adverse weather we are exposed to annually. (This isn't a denial, the scientific evidence is fairly sound climate change is happening and mankind is playing a role in it.) But on an annual/regional level it is largely not much different then years/decades past. Years of wild weather, some extremes and so on.

That being said, this year has been way better than last year. Last year, the frost pretty much wrecked the apple tree. The wet spring stunted the garden growth...and I didn't get any food out of the garden for at least 2-3 weeks later than usual because of that.

This year, the fruit trees have flowered, and with the long range forecast looking good we are going to transplant everything from inside to the garden this week. Lots of "the same old' like greens, tomatoes, etc. One thing we are not planting this year: Watermelon. They are just obnoxious... 🙂
I've got a really good feeling about this year. The weather has been good, rains have been periodic, lots of sun....

We have one rain barrel. Full from spring already...but I know when summer hits I'll be kicking myself for not hooking a couple more up in series. (Our neighbour now is upto 3...which is smart.)

One of the things I am personally doing on the farm is edge zoning in the food forest.

By this I mean that I am zone 5a but I have apple tree's that will go down to zone 2, Zone 3 and Zone 4 as well as Zone 5, I have pears to zone 3 and plums to zone 3 as well as fruiting bushes that are zone 2 to 4 as well.

All of them will produce in a warmer spring or weather but they will bloom at different timing, they also all have different harvest time staggering the picking and processing timing, as many of them as I can find are very old heritage including one that goes back to 1700..the goal is to find the hardiest I can that in many cases to not require regular spraying, because they were developed when that was not possible.

I also have my zone 5, they rarely produce at this point but I want to be able to move a zone up as well as the zones down..

A number of my fruiting bushes are all berries that were used to make storage dried fruit and or fruit leather by the natives for winter keeping, in many cases at this point, I am not harvesting all of them.. some of them are allowed to be harvested by the birds and so forth.. I just do not need the volume put up today that I want to have to be able to harvest in a "just in case"

I carry this over into my garden but I will save more details on this and how I am applying it to another post..

So are you doing something like this? What is your go to native fruiting bush? What is your go to hard fruit tree's? Are you finding that it has changed over the past ten years? What has been your biggest challenge over the past ten years?

For hard stone fruits, my biggest challenge has been frost damage on flowers.. in the past ten years, I have had frost damage five out of the ten years, I have planted new tree's that bloom at different times to try and work around this.

How are your bee's this year so far? I am not sure if its the winter, or the slow cold spring but at least in our area and our province, the winter kill off of the bees has been huge and very noticeable. I am taking matters into hand on my plum tree's with a bit of a help of a feather or two from my roosters culls.

http://www.570news.com/2018/05/15/winter-losses-bee-colonies-ontario-worst-record/

I have thankfully ordered in some native bees and I hope that will give a hand.. I have also overwintered my squash bee area carefully and I hope to see that they came though the winter in better terms, Right now I have three of my smaller native bee's and my bumbles.. not a single one of my honey bees local wild nest are showing any signs that they have made the winter.

Regardless of where you are living.. I would be interested to know how your winter was, and how your native or honey bee's are doing this year.. I also found it very interesting that many of the beekeepers are not going to be taking their bee's to do the blueberry crops this year as its effecting the bee's for the rest of the year..

https://globalnews.ca/news/4119157/bc-bee-shortage-blueberries/

In keeping with this, what are you doing if anything on your land to feed the bee's you do have? Have you added in a bee house or are you planting seasonal feeder plants, scrubs and trees?

Lets talk about Vanilla beans.. I am so glad that I have a good amount in storage.. I have a number of years worth of supply but still.. I would not be buying or using at this point in regards to the price point.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/vanilla-prices-halifax-cake-shop-cost-1.4592165

A one-litre bottle of vanilla paste that cost about $30 rose to $80, then $125 and it's now hovering around $160, she said. That 500-per-cent jump was one of the reasons Harrison recently increased her prices for the first time since opening her shop five years ago.

The high cost of vanilla is being blamed on short supply. Last spring, cyclone Enawo tore through Madagascar, where about 80 per cent of the world's vanilla is grown.

"What producers and suppliers had said was, 'You know what, it was a bad crop. It should improve.' Well, it hasn't improved yet. I don't know if it will, but we haven't seen any decrease," Harrison said.

I have personal hopes that the price will come down and become reasonable again and that I will at that point stock up.. How about you> Do you have a couple years worth of beans stored and you can wait it out? or are you changing your use? Can you afford to take a 500 percent price hike? or have you moved to fake flavour?

I am only gardening small-scale now, as my backyard gets little sunshine. That said, I have decided to only grow "hardy" plants and ones that are mostly native to Eastern Canada/this zone, so nothing has to be "babied" - nothing that needs tons of water or fertilizer (( make my own) and I can recover seeds.

No bees to be found so far in my area. Its going into May 26th and still no spring rains, none really. a couple times a little mist fell, not enough to move my rain gauge. Some counties have burn restrictions in place, and water use advisories. Spray parks shut down.

Thanks for the overview so far Peppercorn. I was just on a garden site last night that was talking about the level three droughts and the amount of states in USA that are being effected right now..

Then I heard about the fires in Manitoba and went looking for some more info on it, and they are in drought levels. I think we will again see record level fires in certain area this year..

The Bee issue is very worrying.. the loss's in both the honey bee's and in the native is being reported across the country at a rates that I have not seen before, I have been member of country wide and provincial beekeeper groups for at least 15 years now. No one has seen a year like this one.. at least not that anyone is saying.. even the old old timers that have been in it for way before their are groups etc

I know too little about bees to comment on the subject other than less of them sounds bad.
Inadvertently my raised beds help greatly in water management, I thought to drain them down the center for water recovery, but what I have found is I quickly learned how much to water so there was no excess to run through in the first place.
I am expecting a much better potato harvest this year in spite of the drought. Just after this picture was taken I hilled them up.

just for fun I did a bed up in leaves, grass, and pine cones..they took longer to take off but are growing now. Note that this bed is constructed of insulated garage door sections...you can get them free from the land fill...scrap metal yards or even from people replacing their garage doors.

14 to 17 inches is roughly the yearly rainfall range I can expect...all my gardening water is from rainfall. Storage is key.

Lets talk about Vanilla beans.. I am so glad that I have a good amount in storage.. I have a number of years worth of supply but still.. I would not be buying or using at this point in regards to the price point.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/vanilla-prices-halifax-cake-shop-cost-1.4592165

A one-litre bottle of vanilla paste that cost about $30 rose to $80, then $125 and it's now hovering around $160, she said. That 500-per-cent jump was one of the reasons Harrison recently increased her prices for the first time since opening her shop five years ago.

The high cost of vanilla is being blamed on short supply. Last spring, cyclone Enawo tore through Madagascar, where about 80 per cent of the world's vanilla is grown.

"What producers and suppliers had said was, 'You know what, it was a bad crop. It should improve.' Well, it hasn't improved yet. I don't know if it will, but we haven't seen any decrease," Harrison said.

I have personal hopes that the price will come down and become reasonable again and that I will at that point stock up.. How about you> Do you have a couple years worth of beans stored and you can wait it out? or are you changing your use? Can you afford to take a 500 percent price hike? or have you moved to fake flavour?

We make our own vanilla extract with vodka. We usually have one new and old batch going. We no doubt need more beans too...

Peppercorn, thanks for the bed overviews and loved the details on the soil and the rain fall.. so you have a third of the average rain fall on your land then I do on my area.. and I agree for sure.. rain water storage is key.

your first spud patch looks really nice.. can you do me a favor and keep a eye out for if they will produce seed balls at all in a raised bed.. its something that I am tracking.. so far the data appears to show that in ground makes more seed balls then raised beds of any kind do.. and I am not sure why.. I need more folks to report back to me on this subject to get a better number spread.

Interesting on the second box.. I would have gone with squash in that mix myself.. come back at the end and tell me what the yield difference is.. is it the same kind of potato so that you are comparing the same kind or are they different?

Yes same type. Yukon gold and German butter ball. Yes I had some seed balls last year( cant remember from what ones though, Had 5 types planted last year, only 3 this year). I will snap a picture of them this year.

I have had seed balls on the german butter ball..