Looking Back on My 2021 Garden

2021 was my first somewhat *serious* gardening season. I bought seeds, grew them to seedlings and then replanted them in my outdoor garden.

While I learned A LOT over the season, perhaps the greatest lesson I learned is that we are all at the whim of Mother Nature. I could put a plant in the best light, water it correctly and do everything necesary to make it thrive, but if a suprise frost came through, it could still kill the plant.

That said, for being my first season, things went fairly well! Throughout the spring and summer, I grew a few varities of tomatoes, peppers, basil, carrots, squash, lettuce and many flowers. I grew some of the vegetables indoors in late winter using my growing rack and light, and then moved them to raised beds I keep in the backyard. I also started composting, which was a good way to "recycle" food scraps and supplement the soil. My grandpa also bought me a few insect houses, which I painted and hung on nearby trees. The goal of the houses is to attract pollinators to my garden, which helps my plants and creates a sustainable environment.

So how did things go, or grow, I should say?

The vegetables were a mixed bag. The lettuce, carrots, squash and herbs did well, but the tomatoes and peppers struggled throughout the season and suffered from a lot of cracking. I think a large part of the problem was that I placed my large raised bed under the mulberry tree in my backyard. I didn't know it was a mulberry at the time and in the summer, the tree's branches blocked a lot of sunlight. The berries also dropped all over in late summer and created some mold in the bed, which also wasn't great. But lesson learned, this next season, I'll be moving the bed farther from the tree.

Most of my flowers did very well, except for a few varities that didn't take well to the soil. I live in the Flint Hills region on Kansas, which tends to have hard-packed, slightly sandy and rocky soil naturally. Things work fine if the soil is well tilled and kept moist, but I had issues keeping my ground soil from drying out.

Not surpringly, my sunflowers grew VERY well. A little too well, actually, as they started to take over the flower bed! They were very pretty and eye-catching but I don't think I will grow them again anytime soon, just because they really took up space.

I didn't really grow enough to cook with much in my kitchen or pass around to friends, but it was a good test season to figure out what works best in the garden space I have. More than anything, I really treasured just pottering around in the garden, doing the daily things that it requires. I found the daily watering and weeding to be a time of peace for me, where I could put away the day for a half hour or so.

And anything that brought me some peace in 2021 was a win in my book.