The new year is always an exciting time. We wake up thinking of all the possibilities that a new gardening season brings us. New opportunities to grow, change, and help our garden evolve. I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2022 has in store for us. Let’s be honest the last couple years as a whole have been chaotic to say the least! I’m hoping that 2022 will bring us more predictability and stability than what the last couple years have seen!
An Overview of My 2021 Gardening Season
Before we look ahead let’s take one last look at last year. 2021 in my garden was a huge challenge, mostly because of time. My full time job is in real estate and it was a VERY crazy year. I spent most of the spring working and that really set me back with starting plants and getting them planted when they needed to be planted. My garden was late, my produce was late, and much of it disappointing. I can’t complain overall as our family is very fortunate but gardening last year was not a top priority.
Disappointing Tomatoes
The tomatoes we grew were disappointing. Many of them ended up suffering from blight and produced very poorly. They were pretty much finished growing by August when normally I would have tomatoes into October. We had a few hang on longer but my favorite tomatoes like the Woodle Orange or the Cherokee Purples just didn’t do so well.
Cedar Apple Rust on my Gala Apple Tree
My Gala apple tree put out an abundance of apples which sounds amazing until you hear that they ended up with cedar apple rust. We didn’t get a single apple from the tree this year. I’ll be doing some spraying this year to hopefully prevent the rust and get a good crop.
Low Pepper Production
My peppers performed well but were very late in producing. I think some of my issues with the peppers and tomato production was the sunlight available in our yard. When we moved here in 2007 the only trees were on the back property like. The hillside was merely field area. We allowed the trees to grow to create privacy but they also created shade. Shade now covers the vegetable garden by 3 PM in the summer. That may sound great but we probably lost 4 to 6 hours of sunlight on the vegetable garden. Plants like peppers and tomatoes love the sunlight and need as much as you can get them to produce prolifically.
Things change over time and the garden is quite different from what it was in 2007. The shade garden has grown and is full of hostas, hellebores, and hydrangeas. I’m pretty happy with the shade garden. It is nearly everything I hoped for when it was started.
Gardening on YouTube in 2021
The Growing the Home Garden YouTube Channel took off last year. It now has over 12,000 subscribers and is still growing. Since spending time in the vegetable garden was a challenge I focused the videos more on plant propagation. I’m planning to do more vegetable garden content on the channel this year. The four most popular videos were Propagating Crape Myrtles, How to Divide Hostas, How to Propagate Rosemary, and “Lots of Blooms but no Squash? This Might be the Problem”. Click on the links below to watch any of those you might be interested in:
Looking Ahead at my 2022 Garden Plans
If all goes according to plan my 2022 will be an interesting one! A lot of what I have planned is going to be based around a big family move. We’ve had the property for a while now and it’s finally time to build our new house. Our land is on just over 7 acres and only about 10 minutes away from where we currently live. So for 2022 the plans we have will revolve around building the new house and getting the old house ready to sell. Plans for the new house are in progress and I can’t wait to see how that all works out. It’s a house plan we’ve designed ourselves based on our family of 7 and the idea that this will likely be our forever home. A home for the kids (and one day grandkids) to come home to.
Prepping the Gardens for New Owners
One of the biggest jobs I’ll have this year is downsizing the garden. As my garden was growing and evolving from nothing it grew larger than I think most people would want to maintain. Gardens are not maintenance free, no matter what people say, and they are in fact are quite a lot of work to keep going! For 2022 we have to reduce the gardens back to a more manageable level and let whoever comes in next determine where this garden will grow next.
Removing Gardens
There are several gardens that I will completely remove including the vegetable garden at the end of the season. Why remove the vegetable garden? At this stage a clean slate is probably the best approach for the next owners. I have a post and wire fence around the garden that has been severely damaged by carpenter bees and woodpeckers. (The bees make holes and the woodpeckers make bigger holes to eat the larvae). The wire fence I can take down and reuse on the new property but the fence posts are in terrible shape. They will make it to the end of this season then need to be removed.
I have a lot of landscaping stone in the vegetable garden for raised beds that I can use for new gardens so I can just transfer that over to our new property as well. The remaining raised beds are wood and are in need of being replaced. The logical thing to do would be to remove all those things regrade the garden area. Then the new homeowners can take the garden where they want without having stuff to clean up.
There are a few other gardens I need to cut back on as well. Gardens I haven’t maintained well and have grown differently than I had hoped. I received some free witchhazel trees several years ago and they are great trees in the garden but they have overtaken a beautiful ninebark I have right next to it. One of those has to move and the ninebark is the easier of the two.
Should I Move or Leave the Greenhouse?
I have a small greenhouse I bought years ago from Harbor Freight that I need to figure out what to do with. On one hand I’d like to keep it and but I really want a larger greenhouse. It’s also in need of a good cleaning and the panels probably could use a replacing and actually disassembling it to move it would be a lot of work. Some decision making will need to be made!
Shed Repairs
When I built the Blue Garden Shed in the backyard I used old windows with wood framing. The shed has been up for around 11 years and those windows are deteriorating. I will likely remove those windows and wall up the openings as the windows themselves really aren’t necessary. I intended the shed to be part greenhouse and part shed but with all the shade back in that part of the yard it’s really just a shed. The shed also has a couple small glass areas that need replaced courtesy of a daughter with a bow and arrow.
Updating the House
We have a number of projects around the house to get into this year. They aren’t really all garden related but after nearly 14 years of being in the same home it’s time for some updates. I will be writing about some of the garden landscaping related items here but won’t write most of the house prep stuff.
Moving Plants
I’ve accumulated a lot of plants over those 14 years. Some of them I plan to keep. Some I will completely remove. Others I will just leave behind. I’ve propagated a bunch of extras to bring with use including boxwoods, hydrangeas, birch trees, cherry laurels, ninebark, and others. I still have more to do though including hostas, heucheras, and hellebores. It’s time to pot them up into moveable containers so that when it is time to go they are ready for the drive down the road.
Start the New Gardens!
By far the most exciting thing on my list is to start our new gardens on the property but realistically that will have to wait until the house is substantially done. If we start building in March, as we hope to, it may be November or December before it is completed. With all the supply issues and craziness in the home building area we have seen in 2020 and 2021 it could take even longer. Probably the best case scenario has us living in our new house in November and able to start doing some prep work for the gardens.
I hope to lay a silage tarp out for the vegetable garden area that will kill off the vegetation in those areas. That is a great way to remove unwanted vegetation without the use of chemicals. I wrote a post with more details on it here: Black Plastic Tarps in the Garden.
Some General Thoughts on the Future Garden
My overall garden plan for the new home is very much a work in progress. They always say when you move to a new home to allow some time to get used to what you have before you make changes. In this case it’s a blank slate, just as our current home was. I hope to leave many areas natural. I want to have walkways and paths through the natural areas that pop out into more refined gardens spots. Growing our own food is important but also I hope to dabble in plant sales in the future as I used to with ornamentals.
I’ll probably detail the home building process to some extent here for you as well. This website has always been about gardening will will always continue to be but for us the house is an important part of Growing our Home Garden.
Thank you for reading, watching, and following along with our adventures! May 2022 be an amazing year for you!
My Garden List of Things to Do in 2022!
- Seed Starting (Jan through Early March)
- Plant the vegetable garden (Greens in Spring, summer veggies late April)
- Mulch the gardens (Spring)
- Take cuttings, cuttings, and more cuttings (all year)
- Replace Deck Boards (Spring)
- Replace windows on shed (Spring)
- Clear Out, clean up Gardens (ongoing)
- Clean Up the Patio (Summertime)
- Pressure Wash the house (Summertime)
- Disassemble the Greenhouse? (Fall)
- Take Down Vegetable Garden Fence (Fall)
- Move stone from Vegetable garden (Fall)
