My Garden Didn’t Go As Planned (BAD GARDEN DESIGN!)

What happens when your garden doesn’t go as planned despite your best efforts? I thought I planned my garden perfectly, but it was a bad garden design. Now, I have to troubleshoot my mistake. Learn how I’m going to fix my most recent garden mistake.

Watch the original citrus hedge planting video: https://youtu.be/U9VgBaXAFeM?si=W2BxmpzhlBP52S90

I use the following products* most often in my garden and yard:
Small Japanese Pruning Saw: https://amzlink.to/az0Ad5wlMluDS
Large Japanese Pruning Saw: https://amzlink.to/az0JWVGhacoR2
Japanese Bypass Pruning Shears: https://amzlink.to/az08Dzhs8BJ1x
Pruning Snips: https://amzlink.to/az0S6BULZGPmi
True Organic All Purpose Fertilizer [5-4-5] (4lb): https://amzlink.to/az0hjJZgpjzCe
Alaska Fish Fertilizer [5-1-1] (Gallon): https://amzlink.to/az0Jhw8liNoe3
Espoma PlantTone Fertilizer [5-3-3] (36lb): https://amzlink.to/az0SocAgVlySv
Espoma PlantTone Fertilizer [5-3-3] (50lb): https://amzlink.to/az0dh0dYaye1l
Espoma Bone Meal (10lb): https://amzlink.to/az0KAuCOZcPgQ
True Organic Blood Meal (3lbs): https://amzlink.to/az0jNeCruTl6a
Azomite Trace Minerals (44lb): https://amzlink.to/az0qPn4i34Eol
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (1.5lb): https://amzlink.to/az0JG0Dv6Da0h
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (25lb): https://amzlink.to/az0F6FgxdhKjO
Insecticide & Fungicide Concentrate: https://amzlink.to/az0SKEbLAFSbU
Pyrethrin Concentrate: https://amzlink.to/az0hrxWNFMSK9
Spinosad Concentrate: https://amzlink.to/az0cWgLhAD56I
Insecticidal Soap: https://amzlink.to/az0LUTcwpDMqn
Surround WP Kaolin Clay: https://amzlink.to/az0QftMdlGkDR
4 Gal Battery Backpack Sprayer: https://amzlink.to/az0yoJL5NNxkB
• Full Amazon Store: https://amzlink.to/az0yli4Cz0iXX

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Good Gardeners VS Great Gardeners
1:17 My Bold Garden Plan
4:35 When Garden Planning And Design Fails
7:13 Troubleshooting The Problem
10:16 The Mistake That’s Hurting My Fruit Trees
12:57 Cutting Down The Tree Canopy
14:18 Analysis And Observations
16:59 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about fixing gardening mistakes and troubleshooting gardening problems, have questions about growing fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please leave a comment!

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MY WEBSITE
https://www.themillennialgardener.com/

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VISIT MY AMAZON STORE FOR PRODUCTS I USE MOST OFTEN IN MY GARDEN*
https://amzlink.to/az0yli4Cz0iXX

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CUSTOM MERCH!
https://shop.spreadshirt.com/themillennialgardener

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SUBSCRIBE TO MY 2ND CHANNEL!
https://www.youtube.com/c/2MinuteGardenTips

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SOCIAL MEDIA
→ INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/millennialgardener/
→ X (@NCGardening) https://x.com/NCGardening

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
Zone 8B, 34.1°N Latitude

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*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

If you want to be successful in gardening, one of the most important things you must do is to have a plan in place before you do anything. That’s why I’ve spent so much time over the years planning out every single aspect of what I’m going to do in my yard and garden before I do it. Every single square foot of my yard, my garden, my fruit trees, my landscaping, that has all been pre-planned because I’ve wanted to do everything possible to guarantee my success before I do anything. But sometimes, no matter how hard we try, things just don’t go according to plan. I have a bit of a mess on my hands because what I designed to happen didn’t. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe. Hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. Being a truly great and successful gardener can be broken into thirds. That first third is proper planning and design. The second third is actually putting in the work. But the third third, well, that is picking up the pieces and troubleshooting, rolling with the punches when despite your great design and all of your hard work, things did not go according to plan. A lot of times it’s this third that really sets apart the great and successful gardeners from just the average or the mediocre. Back in 2017, I moved from Pennsylvania to the southeastern coast of North Carolina, zone 8, just outside of the Wilmington area. And when I did this, I knew from the get-go that I wanted to be able to grow lots of citrus and things like an avocado tree in ground. And back in those days, it was virtually unheard of to grow these types of plants in ground because it’s just too cold where I live. Well, I did not let that stop me. I I found myself really cold hearty varieties of citrus and avocados. I planted them in ground. I developed my own unique cold protection techniques and I had tremendous amount of success. Over the past decade, I have grown literally hundreds of pounds of citrus in ground as well as probably have been the first person to successfully grow and harvest avocados in ground long term here in North Carolina. And I’m very proud of that. So, because Dale and I had so much success growing our own citrus in ground here in North Carolina, we decided we wanted to double down. We wanted to not just grow the trees that you see here, which have been very fruitful. We wanted to grow them all over our yard. So, I decided that I was going to grow a cold hearty citrus hedge in the rear of my property, which would be probably one of the first in the entire state of North Carolina. So, what I did was I sourced cold hearty citrus varieties. And I started out with three individual plants. They were the caracara red naval orange, the Maywa kumquat which is a sweet kumquat and the brown select satsuma which is a cold hearty mandarin orange that is an earlier version basically of the oari satsuma that I’m growing in the front of my backyard up against the house wall. And I planted these trees in ground about 4 years ago and they have grown and thrived ever since. And since then, I have slowly expanded this citrus hedge. Now, I have a marorrow blood orange that I’m growing in ground. And I also have a Eustace lime quat that you see right here. This has been in ground for 2 years. This has been in ground for one year. So now I have five varieties of citrus that are growing and thriving in my rear property. But to be clear, I picked the rear property to grow this citrus hedge for a very specific reason. My original citrus trees are growing up along the south wall of my house because the south wall of my house is brick. It absorbs the sunlight throughout the day and radiates it back throughout the night and it also blocks the cold north wind here in the northern hemisphere. So, it’s the warmest spot in my yard and garden to grow the citrus. It was a big microclimate advantage. Well, one thing that I noticed over the years was here in my rear property. This is where I have something of a tree canopy. And I noticed that when I would get a light to moderate frost in my yard, the frost line would stop somewhere around here. And the canopy right here would stop the frost. It wouldn’t frost in this area right here. So, I thought, “Wow, that would be perfect to grow cold hearty citrus because it’s still too cold where I’m at to grow them out in the open.” So, this little protected microclimate here would help the citrus along. And for the first couple of years, this plan went off without a hitch. It was a dream plan. In fact, none of my trees ever suffered any kind of cold damage as they worked their way through the first couple of winters, which is the winters where they are the most vulnerable to cold when they’re small and they haven’t quite taken root. And every year I was being rewarded with big citrus blooms. These little tiny citrus trees, they were bearing fruit. I got caracara red navl oranges that very first year. The kumquat has been a pretty good producer, giving me two harvests a year, and every year the Brown Select Satsuma was punching above its weight and giving me nice harvests of oranges despite its small size. However, that success was short-lived. While my citrus trees have thrived in terms of being healthy and not taking any kind of cold damage, the past 2 years have been a bust when it comes to fruit production. This is my four-year-old Caracara red navl orange. There are no oranges at all on this tree. Zero. I got no flowers and no fruit. My Maywa Kumquat, on the other hand, well, this is doing pretty well. This is covered in fruit and I usually get two blooms a year on it. I’ll get um two harvests. So, as you can see, there is a fair amount of fruit on this tree. I’m pretty happy with its overall productivity. However, the tree itself, this is a 4-year-old tree, and I can’t believe how small it is. It has been a very slow grower, almost stunted. My brown select Satsuma is truly heartbreaking. This tree has been a pretty consistent producer, and this is the first year ever where it has absolutely no fruit on it. It did not flower at all for me this year. My Marorrow Blood Orange has only one cluster of fruit on it. You can see that cluster of fruit here. There are four oranges on it that are just beginning to ripen. This is a later orange that tends to ripen on you at some point in January and February. And my Eustace lime quat has been in ground for only a year. However, it does have a couple of fruits on it. Look, we have two little fruits right there. Looking pretty good. So what we see right here is that the two fruit trees that have kumquat in its lineage and have very small fruits, well they have a bit of a harvest on them. But the ones that actually produce large oranges, well, they have almost nothing. The caracara has nothing. The brown select satsuma has nothing. And our blood orange has a lousy four oranges on it. So three fruit trees are giving me a grand total of four oranges. And that’s just unacceptable. So this is where we have to start troubleshooting. This is what really separates the mediocre gardeners from the great gardeners. When things don’t go according to plan, can we fix it? Can we troubleshoot that problem? So, I immediately got to thinking, well, maybe it’s just an environmental thing because this year, my really great producing citrus trees all kind of had a lousy harvest. And I tie that to the horrible winter that we had. We had the coldest January that I ever experienced in the eight years that I’ve lived here with five nights in the teens, three to four inches of ice and snow and all of these citrus trees and my avocado tree had to stay covered through the entire month of January. So my hypothesis was the reason why I had a poor citrus bloom on these trees this year is simply because they were covered too long. They are evergreen trees. They need to absorb all of that solar energy to make plant food for the new bloom in the spring. So, because it was just such a bad winter and they were covered so long, they just didn’t get all of the plant food that they needed to make that big bloom. And that explains why I’m having an off year with my citrus. So, it’s really tempting to say that must also be the reason why I’m having such poor productivity with the rear citrus hedge in the back of my garden. But then I remembered something else. All of these citrus trees also had a pretty lousy go last year as well. They had a below average harvest, way less than they had the prior year and the year before that when they were only a year old. When something happens once, it’s a fluke. But if something happens two times, it starts turning into a pattern. So, while my Oari citrus tree is having an off year this year, that would be classified as a fluke and easily explained by the horrifically bad winter we had. You see, last year this thing was absolutely loaded with fruit. I had my biggest harvest ever. At least 150 to 200 oranges. This tree was just overwhelmed by the fruit load. It was out of control. Same thing with this meerle lemon tree right here. This year it only has about two dozen lemons on it. But again, this is easily explained away by that horrifically bad winter and all of the time it spent under covers. You see, every year before this, this myerlemon tree was overwhelmed with fruit. In fact, last year once again, it had its biggest harvest ever. It had hundreds of lemons on it. It was absolutely overwhelmed to the point where it was practically pulling the tree over. So, it’s not a big deal to me that when we have an epically bad winter, our trees suddenly have one off year when the norm is to produce like mad. And that is why the bad year hypothesis completely falls apart. Sure, we could explain away the poor production this year because we had an epically bad winter the previous year, but that doesn’t explain why I also had the same poor production last year where really only the small fruited kumquat was able to muster the energy to fruit when my other citrus trees had by far the biggest harvest they ever had. Something environmental must be at play. And I think I figured it out. I think I know what the problem is. It’s this darn shed. You see, I had this shed built two years ago and I had it placed here in the middle of my yard because, well, that was the best spot for it where it wouldn’t be in the way of things. But I think that shed has completely shaded out all of these citrus trees in the winter time. So, let me show you how my yard works. In the center of my camera right here, that is where the sun rises. That is the east. The ocean is right over there. And then over the course of the day, it tracks along kind of like this until it eventually goes behind my fence. And then it gets blocked by the trees that you see right here. And then you can see the sun right there. That is where it’s setting. We are about 2 hours away from the sunset. And that is where my citrus trees are. So, it would used to be that my citrus hedge got the bulk of its solar energy when the sun would rise in the east because that is a straight shot over to the citrus trees. But right now, I have this shed in the way. So, the shed is casting shade on those citrus trees, particularly during the winter when the sun is low in the sky. So, these poor citrus trees are no longer getting the sunlight that they were used to. And I think that is why they’re not really blooming anymore. Now, citrus are a native understory tree. They’re a naturally semi-dwarfing tree, so they’re used to growing under the protection of shade canopies of taller trees and absorbing dappled light. So, in terms of health, having them grow underneath a forest canopy is a really good thing, but not so much in terms of fruit production. Remember, the goal of every single plant is to reproduce, to make seed to spread to another generation. And these citrus trees, well, in order to do that, they only have to produce a handful of fruits. They don’t need to be super abundant. And as a human, I want them to be. So, it is clear that they are not getting enough sunlight to put on a big crop now because of the shed and the dappled light condition overhead. So, this once protective forest canopy is now working against me. And this explains why the small fruited trees like the kumquats and that lime quat, well, they’re able to flower because they don’t need as much solar energy, but the bigger oranges to make those big fruits, well, I think they’re starving of plant food. And that is only amplified in the winter months when the sun is low in the sky and the days are short. So, they’re not getting enough sunlight absorption in the winter for them to put on the flowers that they need to put on in March, April, and May. So, I’m going to thin out this canopy above my citrus trees, this lower canopy right here, in an attempt to get them more direct solar energy. And to do that, I’m going to use my very trusty Japanese small hands saw. And I’m going to do this in lifts. I’m going to start far out on the branch and I’m going to cut them in pieces because I don’t want to cut this whole big branch at once. If I do that, I actually risk it falling and hitting the ladder and me falling or something like that. So, it’s very important that you do this in waves, in little tiny successive pieces to be as safe as possible. And wow, I can already tell a massive difference in this space. I had all of those branches that were hanging over, shading out those citrus, and now everything is so much brighter, so much lighter. I got rid of all that nasty debris falling from the sky. That whole ugly tree was cut down. And now I have just such a better, clearer view of all of the citrus plants underneath. And that being said, I still have plenty of forest canopy above to give my citrus trees plenty of frost protection. So removing those lower limbs aren’t going to do anything negative, I don’t think. In fact, I may have to buy one of those long-handled pruners and remove some more of these branches that may be hanging down and blocking a little bit more sunlight than I otherwise wish they would. So again, right away, there is a monster difference in this open area. It’s so much more free flowing. I can breathe so much more easily. I think I’m going to get more sunlight penetration now that I don’t have those pesky branches that were hanging over right about here. Now, is this going to be enough of thinning the canopy to make up for the difference of the shed and how much light that is blocking? I don’t really know the answer to that question. But if I’m able to give my citrus trees another 30 to 60 minutes of light every single day and then that adds up over all of November, December, January, February, March, April, you know, six additional months where it can get an extra half an hour to hour of sunlight, that’s going to add up into hundreds of hours of additional sunlight. At least 100. So that’s better than nothing. It’s going to give my trees a fighting chance and a better chance of having a good flower next year. So stay tuned. We will see if this method worked. And as for all the branches that we cut down, we are going to take our pruning shears and saws and we’re going to cut them in little pieces and mulch them around the bottoms of all of our trees. We don’t want to let any of this good organic matter go to waste. So if you’re having problems in your yard and garden with your plants and you think something is wrong, you don’t have to accept it to be. So start troubleshooting. If you get thinking, chances are you will come up with some reasons why things aren’t working out and you can do something about it. Do I know 100% for a fact that all of the pruning that I just did is going to make these citrus trees return to their former glory? No. It’s possible I didn’t thin enough. But I am pretty confident this is the cause of most of my problems and that this will help to some degree. And this is the path of becoming a better gardener. It’s trying new things and trying to solve problems. If you don’t get it right the first time, don’t worry about it. We have plenty more chances to get it right down the road. The important thing is to never give up and to never stop trying to be better. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. 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. If you’re curious about any of the products that I featured in this video, like this awesome pruning saw, I’ll place direct links down in the video description for your convenience. For everything else I use in my yard and garden in real life, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, you’ll see everything I use in real life. And while you’re down there, check out my new website, the millennialger.com, for all things gardening and custom merch to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Well, it’s the 15th of the month and that means it is time to give Dale his monthly heartworm preventative. When we worked for the shelter, it was astounding how many dogs would come in with heartworms. More than half. Because all you need to get a heartworm is to be bitten by a single mosquito and you can get the parasites. Do not believe people that say things like these these antiparasitics are dangerous to dogs. They absolutely are not. They are cheap. The side effect profiles super low. And if your dog gets heartworms, it’s an absolute nightmare to them because the the heartworms, they eat holes in the heart. So, you have to basically put your dog in solitary confinement for months. They can’t go for walks. They can’t play because if they get their heart rate up, they could have a heart attack and die. And we’ve lost so many dogs because of nasty old fartworms. So, one of the best things you can do for your precious pup is to get them on an incredibly safe, effective, and cheap antiparasitic for heartworms. It’s so important, right, buddy? We love you. We love you, Mr. Handsome.