I remember waiting impatiently for construction of the potager to end; it seemed to last forever! And here we are, making preperations for 2026! 2025 marked the second year gardening in the potager. I learned a number of things about the potager and am still learning out how to get the most from the garden. Here is how things went in the potager in 2025.
Spring
Seed starting begins in late winter here in USDA zone 5b. I really enjoyed my time out in the glasshouse on a late winter’s day, especially when the sun was shining!
January – March
In addition to starting sweet pea seeds in January, in February, I started cold loving snapdragon seeds. By the middle of March, it was time to prick out the snapdragon seedlings and pot them up.
I also put the geraniums that I overwintered in the laundry room out to the glasshouse as soon as I turned the heat on. They really appreciated the extra daylight, and turned bright green quickly!
I also had ranunculus corms going, and pansy and viola seedlings. By the end of March, we started to see more sunshine, and it was so nice in the glasshouse I could take my jacket off!
It was also at the end of March when Northern Lower Michigan experienced once of the worst ice storms in our recorded history. We were mostly spared here at our house, but many areas around us had well over an inch of ice covering everything.
Normally, the ice melts the next day, but temperatures stayed below freezing for the next two days, and then…the wind picked up. The devastation was widespread; one estimate said over 3 million acres of forest in Northern Lower Michigan was severely damaged.
April
By April, the tomato seedlings were humming along after their first pot up out in the potager. I love brushing my hand over the tops of the seedlings; that inescapable scent of tomato leaves fills the air, and I know summer is closing in on the heels of spring!
By mid April, the glasshouse was filling up quickly! The first round of snapdragons and the ranunculus sprouts were put outside for a little each day to begin hardening off. The sweet peas had already been out for a few weeks, and were busy growing deep roots in the cold weather.
And, we had an unexpected bonus on April 18; it was warm enough to have my morning coffee on the deck! And then, cold enough again to have a fire in the fireplace the very next day. Such is spring in Michigan!
Summer
Spring held on for as long as it could in 2025. May was very cold and the soil took a long time to heat up, which of course, put the garden behind schedule.
It took much longer to harden seedlings off, and the glasshouse was splitting at the seams with 500 tomato plants and the rest of the tender annuals that just couldn’t handle the cold and windy weather we had. The hardening off process lasted much longer than it really should have, and I actually tired of moving 27 flats in and out every day!
June
By the middle of June, the first of the snapdragons and ranunculus were harvestable, and I was able to take the first bucket of flowers to the flower shop I work at.
By the end of June, the potager was picking up speed and looking lush and green! The delphinium were blooming; the flower stalks were so tall this year! The climbing roses, David Austin’s “Lady of Shallot”, were blooming prolifically, and I was able to find a few stems long enough to cut for the house.
I absolutely love having a copper fire bowl in the potager! I take advantage of any opportunity to put a fire in the bowl and sit and enjoy the flower garden.
The sweet peas were not a successful as I would have liked. I am guessing I need to make better ammendments to the soil for them and fertilize more often. I also might have pushed the cold temperatures too far when putting them outside in March. Changes will be made for 2026, and we will see how they fare.
By July into August, the cosmos were coming on and the snapdragons were in full production. The sweet williams and amazingly, sweet peas, were still producing! I had an additional growing space up at the family farm, where I planted heat loving snapdragons and zinnias.
Fall
September was a lovely month, one of the best in my area along with June, in my opinion. The peach trees that I put in in 2024 in the potager, were laden with fruit, and I was finally getting dahlias!
According to the weather forecast, one afternoon, we knew one of the last warm evenings of September was upon us, so we put a fire in the copper bowl in the potager and stayed until the chill set in. The potager is simply magical at night, and I soak up as many evenings as I can there!
By October, the end was on the doorstep, but flowers in the potager refused to give up. For various reasons, I delayed getting tulip bulbs in the ground until November. Within days, we received a large accumulation of snow, and just like that, winter had arrived again.
2025 was a lovely season in the potager
I love my new garden. As I wrote about in my blog post “A Potager: Vegetables, Cut Flowers and More”, the french kitchen garden, or, potager, stole my heart years ago. I look forward to each season in the potager, and spend many hours over the winter season studying other gardens and making plans for my own for the coming summer. This winter is no different. I have changes planned and a second gated perennial garden that I have planted blackberries in and will also plant other perennial’s, such as blueberries, this spring. I hope you follow along.
