The Missing Monsoon Trough and the New Gardening Year

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So, the Twelfth Day of Christmas has come and gone and that’s the end of another festive season.

It’s tradition in our family to start putting up the Christmas decorations after the First Sunday of Advent and then to make sure they are all down by the end of the Twelfth Day. Everything is now packed away and stored, awaiting the new festive season.

I always regard January as the start of a new gardening year, as well as a new year in general. Others I know, have a different view and regard the start of Summer (in September here) as the beginning of a new gardening year.

Here in the tropical north however, it makes more sense to think of January being the start of a new year in the garden, because that is usually the time when the weather conditions can be most disruptive and destructive, and wreak havoc in the garden!

January is mid-Summer, and even though both our wet season and cyclone season officially begin at the end of Springtime, it’s usually the months between January and March (beginning of Autumn) that we see the monsoons and cyclones arrive. Of course, we’d prefer the monsoons without the cyclones, but they do usually go hand-in-hand!

In the first weeks of this new year, we’ve only had a few isolated showers of rain (around 1.6 mm so far), after a record December rainfall total. While we had showers, downpours and storms last month, these were sporadic and an indicator of the late onset of the monsoon trough.

As the monsoon trough is missing in action, there are no predictions of coming monsoonal rain, because of the absence of the great rainmaker!

We also haven’t seen any cyclones across our northern region yet, and none are predicted in the near future, as it’s the monsoonal trough that spawns tropical lows and tropical cyclones. All of this is highly unusual so it will be very interesting to see how the 2025 monsoon & cyclone season unfolds from here.

In the garden at the moment, everything is really in a holding pattern for now, apart from the weed growth and pest problems.

I don’t spend much time outdoors, as it’s excruciatingly hot and humid (typical summer weather) and I get exhausted and dehydrated too quickly these days. Every day the temperature hovers around 32 deg C with humidity levels up around 70%.

All I can manage most days is the hand-watering in the early morning or in the evenings, a bit of weeding in the cooler hours, and some fertilising.

I have been potting up a few things (Pentas and a Salvia) that I purchased using a gift voucher I received as a Christmas gift. The voucher was from the local gardening centre so I couldn’t resist making a visit!

I also couldn’t resist “saving” these lovely Rex begonias from the sale trolley at the garden centre. With a bit of TLC, feeding, watering and re-potting, they’re looking much healthier and happier.

I have been dealing with a couple of pest issues as well, very usual for this time of the year – a mealy bug infestation of nearly all the Coleus plants, and Hawkmoth caterpillar invasions, the latest of which involved decimating a couple of Impatiens plants!

While I’m mostly keeping indoors during the day, I do wander out every now and then to enjoy the “summertime reliables”, which are all flowering nicely:

such as the Mussaenda philippica x flava “Calcutta Sunset”,

the Allamanda cathartica,

the Cassia fistula,

the various Hibiscus rosa-sinensis shrubs.

There have been loads and loads of Grass Yellow Butterflies enjoying the nectar of the Cassia fistula flowers and the Duranta blooms.

I’ve spotted the first blooms on the Jasminum polyanthum that climbs over one end of the pergola,

and the first flower sprays on my two Lagerstroemia indicas, out in the tiered garden beds.

These are flowering a little later than usual.

Grasshoppers are in abundance right now, cute little ones

and not so cute huge things!

I tend to let them do their thing, unless they’re really destroying something.

• 6 Jan, 2025
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