2021 Garden Recap

Our 2021 garden story.

As you may have noticed, I didn't do monthly garden updates this year.

The truth is that we struggled a lot with keeping up with the garden this year.

Then when we finally got everything back on track, we had a series of floods which really impacted the garden.

Our yard will sometimes flood after heavy rains in the summer but it never really reaches the garden.

This year we had 2 really big floods in the yard which ended up reaching the garden.  The first flood spared a couple rows of tomatoes but the second flood left everything underwater.  

It also has been a very rainy season overall so the garden could never fully dry out from the rain.  I'm still having a difficult time mowing the lawn because it is just so wet & muddy.

Here are a couple pictures from the floods we had:

These were from the first flood.  It was pretty bad, but the tomatoes in front stayed dry & the water wasn't so bad.

This is the second flood.  Not only did the water reach the entire garden, the water itself was super muddy.  Because the water was basically running into our yard, we picked up a lot of debris.  This flood left the plants with a layer of dirt on them.

In my years of living here, I had never seen a flood like the second flood.  It picked up the railroad ties we have stored in the yard & moved them all around.  We luckily have a fence that separates us from the creek so a lot of things stayed in the yard.  I did have some larger planting pots that ended up going above the fence & making an escape into the creek!  The water was that high!

So after the second flood, the garden was pretty much done.  Everything on the back side of the garden (closer to the creek) didn't produce anything.

Our tomatoes are producing, but not at their potential.  I have quite a few Roma tomatoes (farthest from the creek) & the other two tomatoes are still coming but it isn't the yield I was expecting.

I know I can't have a great gardening season every single year but this year was super frustrating!  I'm now trying to salvage what I can & plan for a better garden next year.  I wouldn't say it was my worst ever gardening year, but it wasn't the best one.