How do you think this years long cold snap will affect this years gardening? (USA)

[yardiron]

This is the first year in more than 20 where we had a long, subfreezing period over the winter. We had more than a month of sub 20 degree, subfreezing whether that led to a deeper freeze than we've seen in over 20 years here.

I'm somewhat optimistic that the cold and deep freeze may have eradicated many pests we've been fighting in recent years. In the past 10 years I've been fighting verious brown worms and leaf cutters and found all sorts of unwanted grubs in the ground, both in the lawn and in the garden that pesticides did nothing for.
Will the cold have killed off some of the pests?
Here in zone 7A, the ground is still frozen from January, our local ponds froze over for the first time in over 20 years, and they froze over thick enough to walk on. Even the ocean froze over on places.

I had been contemplating moving the garden after barely being able to fight off the invasion of pests last season that nothing seemed to touch. I ended the growing season after nearly all the late crop tomatoes were loaded with small brown worms. Various tests showed they were not affected even by Sevin or other pesticides. I had grown vegetable sin the same 40x20 patch of ground in the back yard for the last 20 years slowly expanding it each year till it spanned half the back yard. Last season I lost two out of every three tomatoes to worms and nothing seemed to stop them. I was planning on just grading it off and planting grass and growing elsewhere but I'm thinking this deep freeze may have killed off some of the pests.

 

[Meadowlark]

I don't expect to see any difference in the garden...normally I don't have any significant problems with pests in the garden.

Where I expect and hope to see a difference is chiggers, ticks, and fleas in the yard and other areas.

 

[yardiron]

We always have issues early in the season with spider mites and flea beetles but a dusting with Sevin usually protects the plant till the mature enough where they're no longer of interest to those pests.
Last year I noticed a good many small white larvae in the dirt while tilling. I took a few down to the farm center and was told they're 'brown worm' larvae. I didn't see anything on the plants till the second week of fruit setting which came late because we had such a late warm up last year, for the fourth season in a row.

I started to find tomatoes that had partially ripened with holes near the stem with small brown worms inside. They attached only certain plants, some were completely untouched, others kept getting attacked.
I dusted with Sevin, it did nothing, I tried various sprays and such but nothing helped.

One thing I did different last year was to mulch solely with shredded leaf mulch. It kept down weeds nearly 100% all season. I think this year I'm going to go with weed mat and only mulch the isles in between the rows.

This is the first year since I've had a garden there, since 2002, that we had a winter with a full month of temps in the single digits every night and or a month that didn't see a day above freezing. We've had cold snaps before but the lakes and ground hasn't frozen in years. I think the last time the ground froze was back in 2005 when we got two big snow storms back to back.

For the last 6 years I've grown two gardens, one in the usually spot, another up near the house in a raised bed with mostly all new dirt every year. Last year I only did a few plants i the raised bed. What I found odd is that after seeding two rows of Okra, not a single seed germinated in the ground, in either garden, yet seeds from the same batch that I started in cups on the porch grew just fine but died once transplanted outside. Okra don't transplant well so that was no surprise. Peas, Okra, and squash were a complete loss last year in both gardens. peas sprouted late and were killed off by the first heat wave, the squash came up but never amounted to anything, they died back soon after getting their second leaves. Those in the raised bad grew but never produced fruit.

There was a complete lack of honey bees all last year, the year prior we had many. For some reason we had no bees, very few wasps, and even no hornets. The only thing we had was a sudden huge number of Tarantula Hawk Wasps. Something I've never seen here before. There were enough of them that the local farm program sent two students out to verify they were indeed here, with one of them getting stung while taking pics.

 

[Ruderunner]

Here in northeast Ohio, I don't think the freeze was effective. We had a fairly deep snow cover that insulated the ground. In fact, deep enough that our cabbages have survived the winter and several have new growth already.

Bugs are out too.

 

[yardiron]

We had single digits for most all of January with snow the last week that came after a short warm up, that snow stuck around for over two weeks before it warmed up enough to melt. Then it went back into the 20's. Last Sunday night we got 24" of snow but its melting fast now, but the ground still seems rock hard , I gave the tiller a try yesterday and it may as well be asphalt even were I scraped away the leaves and mulch from last year. We're supposed to be cold for the next few days but today were already at 49°F. Tomorrow they're calling for snow and 31°F, but its supposed to be warm all week after that in the mid 60's.
I'm hoping for an early warm up compared to years past. Its been 8 years since Iw was able to put my plants in before the end of April. (I had everything in by April 5th back in 2010, and had tomatoes by June 10th). Our spring has stayed cooler ever since but we've been jumping from spring to full-on summer most years. Going from the 50's to upper 80's all at once it seems.

My potted Fig trees that I rooted last year are already waking up on the porch, I've got new growth shooting up after only a few days being warm out there.
They're going to have to get in the ground soon.