This Year Nearly Broke Me, but My Garden Is UNSTOPPABLE!

This has been the most difficult year of my life, both mentally and physically. At times, I didn't even think I was going to make it. I don't even know how I'm still standing right now. And as usual, I got way over my head with the garden this year, but it doesn't just stop at the garden. It's like everything that could have gone wrong did. First, I committed to resetting and rebuilding my entire garden with taller beds. Then we got the worst cold we've had in a generation that burnt all of my fruit trees to a crisp. Then after that, I decided to finish construction of the roof on my garden, which was way too much work. Then I had to refill all of my new taller raised garden beds and it's just been an unbelievable amount of work trying to get all this stuff done. And I've also personally had a lot of different life changes. This year is actually my 40th birthday next week. So I've been undergoing a lot of different changes in my personal life that I'll share with you all at a later date. I have been working 80 to 100 hours every single week for at least the past five years straight. That's what it takes to do all of this by myself. All of the filming, the editing, the physical work in my garden that nobody helps me do. I still work my electrical engineering job during the days as well. And it's just been an immense amount of work and I'm just kind of reaching the end of my rope and burning the candle with both ends too long. And for all of these reasons and all of this work I took on, this has just been the hardest year of my life, both mentally and physically. And to cap it all off, we're just having an absolutely miserable July. It has been so disgustingly hot and dry. I'm just covered in sweat right now. And some of you may be saying, well, you know, nobody's making you do all this stuff. You don't have to put this much work into your garden. You're really just killing yourself doing all this. But the truth of the matter is the garden is the only thing that's really holding me together. Yes, I bit off more than I could chew this year, but you know what? It has been an incredibly rewarding process. It was an immense amount of work getting this greenhouse roof constructed right here. But you know what? It has paid unbelievable dividends because I have had the most insane tomato production I have ever had. I have picked hundreds and hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. And keep in mind, I have not pruned any of these at all. This isn't really disease on any of these plants. It's just natural dieback. That's what happens when you let tomato plants do their thing. And I am just overwhelmed with just thousands of absolutely massive tomatoes. Look at them all. And they are setting fruits all the way to the top of the roofs, even though it has been literally 100 degrees here several days, which almost never happens here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina, with heat indexes over 110 in many different instances. And I am just overwhelmed with fruit. It is incredible. This greenhouse roof has literally been the greatest thing I have ever built. Just wait until I take you to the cherry tomato side. This is pure magic, folks. There are thousands of cherry tomatoes in this raised garden bed right here, just more than the eye could see. And I picked a whole bunch before I actually started filming this video because I made a whole bunch of salsa. I mean, just look at them all. And what's great about it is, because they are not getting wet, well, they are not cracking. So I'm actually able to use all my tomatoes. I'm not losing any of them to a lot of the cracking that you typically get. And yeah, it's pretty thick in here. There's a lot growing on, but the productivity has been just incredible. So while it was a lot of work doing this, it was just a one-time thing. So I'm never going to have to go through that trouble again. Then we have the peppers that are growing underneath the greenhouse tarps, and boy, do they love staying dry. The amount of productivity I'm getting on these peppers, it's just out of control. These pepper plants are already five feet tall, and they are still setting immense amounts of fruit, even though I keep harvesting them like crazy, and they just won't stop producing. It is magical, the amount of productivity I'm getting on all of these plants. I already made several jars of pickled peppers, and then when we start getting these Trinidad scorpion peppers, that is going to be a real trip right there. They were nuclear last year, and they're setting fruit as high as the eye can see. I have all of my hot peppers on this side, and then on this side, I have the sweet peppers. I wanted to keep them separated so I don't accidentally get them mixed up, because that could be a no-no, especially when you factor in how often I'm sharing these. Look at all of those peppers right there. Is that not lunacy? One of the things you have to learn about growing peppers is the more you pick, the more you get. So if you want them to keep producing, you have to actually dedicate time to go outside and pick, because we have a habit of letting things sit on the plant. Yeah, you need them to sit on the plant if you want them to turn red, unfortunately, and that's why red peppers are more expensive than green peppers, but if you want them to be green and you just wanna pick them, well, you'll get a lot more productivity. Like these Jimmy Nardellos here, well, if you want them to turn red, you're going to have to let them sit on the plant to turn red, but if you want them green, you'll get much more production. Same thing with all of these banana peppers, just off-the-charts production. Look at that, even these sweet Bella bell peppers. Bell peppers usually don't grow in the coastal southeast, but these are off the charts. They are performing. So please, try this variety if you struggle growing bell peppers. One of the main reasons why all of my tomatoes and peppers in these raised garden beds are doing so well is because of this greenhouse tarp over above. It's so large and it extends so far out. It's blocking all of the sun throughout the day. So this gives tremendous amount of UV protection, even though the light is shining through. So it makes it like a dappled understory for these plants to grow. Now, unfortunately, this container garden area right here, this only has an eight foot wide piece of greenhouse tarp over it. So while it is keeping the plants dry, they were getting absolutely annihilated by the sun for most of the morning and also the sun behind it in the afternoon. So I've lost a lot of my plants. The sun just annihilated them and they started getting wilt and all kinds of diseases. So I have already had to pull several of these plants and I also wasn't able to get irrigation going to them. So unfortunately, I've already lost about a third of these plants. Next year, I will fix the problem by installing this shade tarp right here a lot sooner. And I also think I'm going to put a piece of cattle panel on these wood posts right here. And then I'm going to put a piece of shade tarp right there to block that afternoon sun that comes from the trees over there. I think that's doing the bulk of the damage. So with a little bit of additional shade, I think I won't quite have the problem with indeterminates next year. I've also had good luck with my zucchini this year. I have never had zucchini plants live four months in my garden. And well, they're finally reaching end of life, but they have lived about six weeks longer than they usually do. So this layout right here is really beneficial to the zucchini as well. This bed over here is where I was growing my winter garlic. And when I harvested it in early June, I had all of these leftover tomato and pepper and eggplant plants from my March and April transplanting that I never used. So I cut them all back and I just threw them in this garden bed. And they are all taking off. They're doing pretty well. And they are going to be a fall crop. I put an extra zucchini plant right here. So this is going to start producing now that my original crop is worn down. Same thing with some cucumbers. I put some cucumber transplants right here, but they are getting battered by the sun. I still have a bunch more in my sunroom that I'm not going to put out for probably another seven or 10 days because it's just too hot for them. So luckily the shade cloth will offer some protection, but this nonstop heat wave, these plants just need a break. In that garden bed right there, I used to have my onions and my lettuce, but I harvested all of that stuff long ago. The only green that is thriving in my garden right now is Swiss chard. If you want to grow a summer hardy green, Swiss chard is where it's at. You will see it's basically free of any pest damage. I have not sprayed it at all. Nothing has attacked it. Look at the old broccoli and cabbage plants that bolted on me that I never removed by comparison. These things are getting chewed to death. I really have to pull all of these before the next generation of brassica pests start breeding. And last but not least, we have our eggplant. I love growing the Japanese types of eggplant. I don't really like the fat eggplants. I like these types and they are so incredibly prolific. I was actually, I just recently picked a bunch and I ground them up in my food processor into a paste and I actually stuffed a bunch of bell peppers with them. And I'm eating stuffed peppers with meatballs. So it's a great way that I could use tomatoes, eggplant and peppers all at once. We have the eggplant that are stuffed inside the peppers and then tomato sauce is all made from the garden tomatoes. What a great way to use your harvest. So while it has been an unbelievable amount of work getting my garden this far with the taller beds, the greenhouse roof covers, all of the shade cloth I have hung everywhere, it's all been worth it because my garden has never been this beautiful and productive. I mean, today is July 10th and usually my plants are half dead by now and they are thriving and they're still pumping out unbelievable amounts of food. And I'm pretty confident that as long as we don't get a hurricane, most of these things are going to be alive all the way until frost, which is almost unheard of here in the coastal Southeast. But that being said, my fruit trees have also been hit this year like none other. Usually I can count on my citrus trees to be relatively problem-free, but we had an absolutely horrific winter where all of my citrus trees got pretty badly damaged by the cold for the first time ever. And then while they did start to recover in late winter, early spring, something else horrible happened. We are having generational drought right now. It's barely rained at all, all year. And even though I've been trying to irrigate them to the best of my ability, because I live on this sandy pine soil, I just can't keep up with how dry it's been because the soil just doesn't hold moisture. So I am having extreme amounts of fruit drop like never before. So although my citrus trees have recovered, I have almost no harvests on them and they're what I rely on to get through from December, January, and into February. They're the only fresh fruit in the yard and garden that time of year. So this has all been very upsetting. But hey, it's not all bad news. This Owari Satsuma was burnt to a crisp a mere five months ago. It looked like it was badly damaged and never going to come back. But look at it now, absolutely gorgeous. The only negative is, there's really not a lot of fruit on it. I mean, yeah, there are a couple of Satsumas, but there are usually hundreds of them on this tree. Now there's only like a dozen because it lost all its fruit during the drought in the spring, at least most of its fruit. And then it also gave up even more in the typical June drop phase. So unfortunately there's almost nothing on this tree. It's going to be mostly an ornamental this year, but hey, at least it's healthy and it'll rebound next year. Next to it, the Lila Avocado was yet again a catastrophe. A lot of the flowers were lost in the bad January freeze and it really didn't produce any fruit. So we're not going to get anything off that tree. The Meyer Lemon is a real heartbreaker because it's one of the few that did well in the cold. And it did originally set an incredible flower and fruit set, but they all dropped because of the drought. So there's maybe only like a dozen or two lemons on here. They are here. We will get some, will be a lot easier to find once they start, you know, changing colors. But unfortunately the hundred plus lemons that I've learned to expect off of this tree, it's only going to wind up being like a dozen or two this year. The only bright spot has been my Sugar Bell Citrus tree. Because this is planted in the fill dirt along my house, instead of the native sandy soil, I guess it must be retaining moisture better because this did not drop nearly as many citrus fruits. So look, there actually are dozens of, well, they're like a hybrid Mandarin. They're like a cross between an orange and a Mandarin. So this is actually setting and holding a record crop. So I'm really hoping for great things off of this tree. I'm so happy. And this is why it is so important that you plant a diversity of different fruit trees because you know what? Sometimes you have a bad season, but you'll get one that still does well. And it'll give you something when all the others fail. Again, sometimes we just have to learn to count our blessings. My rear citrus hedge was also badly damaged in the January cold and look at it now. Everything is beautiful. It has come back strong. Yes, we are not really going to have any fruit back here. There's a couple of lime quats forming there. None of my oranges or satsumas held any of their fruit. They dropped them all. We will get a couple of kumquats off of here. The small fruited ones are a little bit more reliable, but no big oranges or mandarins back here, unfortunately. And thankfully our new Stuart avocado is doing really well. So at least these plants are thriving because for a little bit there, I feared the worst. But despite all the problems I'm having with my fruit trees in general, there still have been some bright spots. The brightest spots so far have been my persimmon trees. They are all producing amazingly, starting with this Giambo persimmon. Now, unfortunately it has been intermittently dropping its fruit throughout this terrible drought that we have and I've been irrigating it regularly, but luckily we still have plenty of fruit on there to get us through, I hope. I just hope that the possums and raccoons are kinder to me this year and they don't pilfer them all once they actually begin ripening because there is a mighty crop on here. Speaking of mighty crops, I think I saw a little stinker back there. There you are. I see you little bunny. I heard Dale was chasing you. I mean, persimmons are really a joy to grow. As long as you can keep the mammalian pests off of them, not too much else bothers them. They are as problem-free of a fruit tree that I've ever grown. You, buddy, I saw you eating those weeds. You're such a good little boy. You can stay in my garden as long as you want. The Ichikigero tree is also having an incredible year. In fact, it is so overwhelmed with fruit, it started to collapse. I'm going to have to rethink how I'm going to prune this tree over the winter after I harvest these crops because this is absolutely insane. These are a naturally dwarfing variety of persimmon, but still, I mean, what am I gonna do with all of these? Hopefully this protects me against the raccoons and the possums because last year, something pilfered all of the persimmons off this tree in one night and left me with nothing. Also unexpected is the production on this barely two-year-old coffee cake persimmon. I just planted this thing two years ago, so it's never produced anything before. Now all of a sudden, wow, look at the fruit on this thing. Absolutely bonkers. I haven't thinned any of it at all. It's just carrying an unbelievable amount of fruit for such a small, young tree. So whatever the conditions are this year that my citrus trees hated, the persimmon trees are absolutely loving across the board. So this is why it is so important that you plant different species and varieties of things because when you hedge your bets like that, even though some plants hate the conditions, others are going to thrive and you'll always have a good year somewhere. But one of the coolest things has been my pawpaw trees. I was devastated because last year, my Naomi's Delicious pawpaw tree died. So I didn't have a cross pollinator to go with this Prima variety right here, but I noticed I was getting some suckers from the root stock. So the root stock was still alive and I bought some scion wood and I grafted them. And in one year, this tree is now as big as the Prima after six years. That's pretty unbelievable. And there are actually two varieties here, Maria's Joy and Naomi's Delicious that will help assisting cross pollinating my Prima right here. But look, for the first time ever, this has never happened. I'm so excited. Maybe this variety after all is partially self-fertile or maybe there's a wild pawpaw growing in the woods here somewhere that I'm unaware of, but there are actually pawpaw fruits at the bottom. This has never had pollination before and it's never had any fruit hole. I need to find a way to protect them because I've actually never had a pawpaw before. And these will be the first I've ever tasted if I'm lucky enough to get them before something else does. I'm also having a blow up year for my Asian pears. Last year, I only got two fruits off of this tree because it's so young, but this year I have so many and they're starting to swell that I had to cover them with insect netting. So there are several dozen Asian pears on this tree. There's also some of the Chojuro variety up top, which is a little bit hard to see, but this is a three in one tree that I grafted where all three tiers are different varieties. Then next to it, my Betty peach after only two years in ground gave me my first fruits and they absolutely blew me away. Just incredible. I can't wait to have a bigger harvest next year. I have yet to ever have any apples off of my apple trees because they're only three years old or so, three full years, but I'm actually getting some larger fruits off of this wine crisp tree right here that have held. There's a few more over here, but the real standout outside of this wine crisp is my sun downer tree. This thing is absolutely off the charts. It's a cousin to pink lady and it just has insane amounts of apples. I've never seen anything like it. In fact, I probably should have thinned it better because there are far too many on this tree and it will probably make them a little smaller than I'd like them to be, but that's pretty awesome. Then my much younger pink pearl tree, I think this is only two years old, has a few clusters of apples on it as well. So for the first time ever, I got a peach and I'm going to get, I think, lots of apples. Here's a very cool exercise in squash right here. One of these squashes are native to the Southeast and one is vine borer resistant, but not native. Over here is the Zucchino Rampicante or Tromboncino squash. This is a borer resistant, but non-native squash. And it is doing really well. I have a lot of fruits on here. I'm letting them harden up and turn fully mature. But then over here, we get to the Seminole pumpkin and you can see the Seminole pumpkin is not being bothered by anything. It's not being bothered by squash bugs, by any kind of diseases, by vine borers, nothing. Really cool. And it's starting to grow little tiny pumpkins that you see down there. There's a Seminole pumpkin right there. That's a pretty cool picture right there. You can definitely see where one squash ends and the other one begins. And hey, look, my Jujube that I thought died actually has some fruit on it. So I guess it is self-fertile and it's still alive and it's doing really well. So happy about that. So although everything has been a record amount of work this year and I'm kind of at the end of my rope and completely burnt out, I'm also being rewarded with the greatest harvest of my life. Yes, putting up this roof on my garden was a tremendous amount of work, but I'm being rewarded by the most incredible production of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, zucchini, and the like that I have ever had. I also had a bust with my avocado and citrus trees, but luckily my sugarbell citrus tree is still producing pretty well, so that'll save the day. And I'm having my first ever harvest of apples, pawpaws, peaches, my first significant harvest for my Asian pears, and the persimmons are just off the charts this year. As long as I can keep the greedy hands of the mammals off of them, well, I think I'll be in pretty good shape overall. But that being said, I do need to scale back a bit moving forward. I can't go this hard every single year. When I started this gardening journey down here in North Carolina, I was 31 years old, and I turn 40 next week, and I feel every bit of the age difference. I just don't have the amount of energy that I used to have. Plus, back then when I just started this journey, I wasn't making all these YouTube videos. I wasn't on such a dedicated and rigorous schedule, so I had way more free time. So between the extra time and the youth, it just didn't hit as hard as it does now. Now I just have so little time to myself, and it's so much work having to maintain all of this that it just isn't getting any easier. And to make things worse, this year YouTube totally changed their home screen and algorithm to favor shorts content much more heavily than long format content. So it's been harder than ever before to get these videos to be shared to a wider audience. So if you're enjoying long format content video like this, please support the videos by hitting the like button, subscribing to the channel, and leaving a comment down in the comment section. Interacting with the videos goes miles to help share the content to a wider audience. It's also been brutal competing with all of these fly-by-night AI videos as well. So if you enjoy this kind of content from a real human creator that puts a lot of effort into their video, please consider doing those things to support my channel. I'd really appreciate it. So I wanted to take this time and share the good, bad, and the ugly of my garden and my life with you all because I think some of you look at the number of videos I've produced, the number of subscribers that I have, and you just assume, oh, this guy's a gardening expert. It must be easy for him. He knows all this stuff and how are we supposed to do this for ourselves? But I want you to know that's not the case. I'm not an expert. I'm an engineer that still works during the day that does all of this work completely by myself with no help at a very minuscule budget. And I still do all the filming and editing and uploading and everything else by myself for all of these videos. So if I'm able to figure this out as a non-expert with that kind of schedule and a garden this size, I think you can do it as well. And I also want you to know that I struggle terribly with all this stuff. This can sometimes be a weight on my shoulder. It's sometimes a burden. It's absolutely miserable outside right now. I'm completely exhausted. I'm sweating my tail off. I don't feel like doing this right now. And when I'm done filming this, I don't want to start taking it inside and start the editing process because I'm really tired. And I want you to know that I go through all of those feelings right now. So if you feel like it's too hot and disgusting outside, I don't wanna do my garden anymore, just let it go. I have put so much work into my garden this year. I can't afford to let it go. And I'm telling you right now, you have put so much work into your garden. You can't afford to let it go. So even if you can't work during the day because it's too hot, wait until 6.30, 7 o'clock and go outside and just slowly put around for 30 minutes doing what you have to do. Irrigate what you have to irrigate, check for pests, harvest what you can, throw up some shade cloth. It'll take you five minutes to toss it over some plants to give them some protection. You can do this. And I know you can, because if I can manage to find the time to do all this, I know you can as well. And if you're fairly new to my channel and you're wondering how I built all of this infrastructure, I'll link to a couple of playlists down in the video description. I archived all of my construction builds in a single playlist. And I have a dedicated playlist to how I built my garden from start to finish that basically archives the entire thing over the last decade. So you can follow along and see how I built everything from scratch. So while I have worked myself half to death this year, and I probably won't be able to maintain this amount of activity going forward much longer, most of the work now is officially in the past. And I think I can scale down a little bit next year. I'm at least going to grow 20 to 25% less tomatoes now that I know that I get such amazing protection from my garden roof, because I just don't need all the tomato plants that I have now, because I'm not taking the crop losses. So everybody, I hope you took something of value away from this video, and you can see that I too myself struggle with all this stuff. And if you feel the same way, just know you're not alone. You're in very good company. However, in the end, it really does all work out and it is all worth it. So sometimes we just have to say, hey, this intense heat, it only lasts really four to six weeks and it's absolute worst. We'll push through it on the other side. And before you know it, we'll all be complaining about how cold it is. That's something you need to understand. You just have to deal with the weather that you have because it's the best weather you're going to get. Don't wish your life away waiting for better weather because before you know it, six months passes in the blink of an eye. So everybody, I sure hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. For everything I use in real life in my yard and garden, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront in the video description. And while you're down there, check out my website, themillennialgardener.com for all things gardening and custom home design merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Boy, oh boy, Dale, look at that. We have a big in at the pond today. Wow, look at the size of that gator right there. He's sunning, somebody likes the heat. It is absolutely wicked out today, but that's okay. We still have to get our walk in and it's not very far. We don't like the sun nearly as much as the gators, right buddy? We just like sniffing all the females, the other dogs leave behind. Gotta check out the trash can, good stuff in there. Look at that gator, so cool. Let's keep going buddy, it's getting too hot.