Backyard Garden Tour: What’s Thriving, What’s Struggling, and Lessons Learned

A few months ago, I planted veggies and herbs all around the yard — and now it’s time to check in and see what’s thriving, what’s struggling… and what got mistaken for a weed.

Our artichoke? Crushing it. Tomatoes? Fruiting! Oregano? Bounced back after a watering fail. And my onions? Let’s just say I’m already dreaming of caramelizing them 🧅✨

Not everything went perfectly — my thyme took a hit, my dad accidentally sprayed my elf-in-thyme (thanks, vinegar solution 😬), and I completely forgot to plant the kale. But that’s the beauty of gardening… it’s messy, real, and full of surprises.

💡Pro tip: never underestimate the importance of choosing good planter locations, especially when dogs and sidewalks are involved 🐾😆

This side-yard garden may not be pristine, but it’s producing, and I’m proud of how much we’ve learned and grown — literally. I’ll keep the updates coming all season long!
What’s growing in your garden right now? Have you had any unexpected plant wins (or fails)? Share your stories below — I’d love to hear them! 👇

Like, comment, and subscribe for more landscaping inspiration and design tips from Sara!

Hire us for your next landscape project: saritalandscapes.com

FOLLOW ME!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarabendrick
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sarabendrick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sara.B.Bendrick
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sarabendrick/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@sarabendrick
Website: https://sarabendrick.com/

Keywords:
#GardenUpdate #EdibleGarden #BackyardGardening #GrowYourOwnFood #HomegrownVeggies #GardenMistakes #LearningToGarden #GardeningJourney #SideYardGarden #OreganoSurvivor #ArtichokeLove #GardeningWins #UrbanGardening #DIYGardenBox #GardenLife #PlantFailStories

so a few months ago I made a video about planting vegetables in your garden you can check it out here i wanted to give you guys an update on how it’s doing come on and let’s take a tour of what worked and maybe what didn’t do so well [Music] so the first thing I want to show you guys because this is doing great is our artichoke here don’t you dare banjo that is mine so this was the imperial artichoke and you can see we have our first one budding out right now it’s beautiful i want to eat it but I’m going to let it hang out here because I’m just so happy i expect this plant to probably quadruple in size over the next few months by the end of the season to get a handful of these flowers or buds that either to eat or let them go to flower i still have my large mulch area in the front as I mentioned in my other video I just like having a big area of mulch that’s a versatile space like I got these nitty-gritty roses that are just hanging out here i’m going to go plant them somewhere else but it gives me space to work and do creative projects i have some lumber to paint i’ll lay out my tarps i’ll do it here so this space will always kind of be like that one addition that wasn’t in the first video was tomatoes i ended up getting this tomato and impulsively throwing it in a pot because I needed to put it somewhere before I left out of town but now we have a cherry tomato here i threw some quick irrigation on it and we’re going to see how this does i think the pot is a little small for this plant but I do think we’re getting fruit so it works for me one thing that was um that I was kind of concerned about initially was either dogs peeing on the herbs or having some other issues so my dad ended up killing a bunch of weeds he uses like a vinegar soap and hot water mix anyways he thought our elf in time here was a weed so he sprayed it but it it’s coming back so half of it died back but luckily he didn’t kill the whole thing which is great and it’s actually starting to spread out this volunteer here I need to keep cutting back i’m actually not sure what it is we didn’t plant it i guess it’s a weed but a weed is just really a plant that’s unwanted i don’t mind it so I guess it’s not a weed one thing that I didn’t think was going to make it originally was this oregano so it’s whole life changed when I realized that the emitter wasn’t close enough to it and it was just like it was barely hanging on so all this growth has been in the last month or so so had it had the closer irrigation and got the water it needed sooner it might have might be bigger by now but yeah we have this oregano in the garden that’s just in this area i hope it spreads a little bit and again this volunteer plant that I’ll kind of keep away from it so that this can grow while I’m here I will mention our tree i’m going to have to cut this it’s so sad but it’s going to have to go it’s It’s too big for the pond i’m sad about it this is a work in progress here we’re cleaning out the pond and picking up weeds so it’s it’s not like totally presentation ready but whatever you guys are here with me so this little guy this is the flower the ornamental flower that we planted because we have one that matches on the other side over there so this is the growth in about 3 or 4 months happy about that i need to move this tarp with all this gravel to give it more room to spread so I’ll do that soon i promise and then over here I had another oopsie with this guy but hey it’s still alive this is the time I was hoping to eat because it was away from the sidewalk so no dogs would be peeing over here when I was picking I was just like going to town and I pulled this guy up i replanted him shortly after but he’s been struggling ever since but I have high faith that he’s coming back and I’ll do another update video in a few more months maybe the end of summer and I expect this to be full and beautiful and delicious okay so the other plant that we have is our lemongrass it doesn’t look like it’s changed at all to me i’ll have to go back and look at the other video of how big it was then i have a lemongrass but it doesn’t look like it’s really grown a lot it’s doing okay but you know you still get the the lemongrass like oh it smells so good you still can use part of it maybe it doesn’t like being in the pond as much as I thought it might or maybe it’s just about to come into its own in the summer or it’s going to become a monster so again I’ll I’ll let you know how that goes so lastly we have our yellow or brown onions here onions the ones on this side are doing so much better than the ones on this side and partly that’s probably because this is where people walk through but also I expect that there’s more moisture on this side over here so these are doing great i can’t wait to harvest these later in the season i love onions one thing I will point out is we have a ton of weeds coming through here so I should have really cleaned up the garden before I did a garden tour but um you guys are just seeing it in real life so this will happen soon i’ll clean all this stuff up and make sure that my onions don’t drown by these weeds over here i’m really happy with the citrus tree though the citrus tree is doing really well it’s a little dry now i take the irrigation on and off of it planting in a pot can be tricky sometimes but what I really love about this tree is I think it has great branching like the form is really beautiful the leaves look generally healthy it looks on a little bit on the dry side so I’m going to go ahead and get that irrigation back on it um especially to hold on to that fruit that it’s just starting so that pretty much wraps it up for the update on the vegetables in the garden i would say most of them are hanging on and doing well i think throughout the summer they’re going to look really really good i can’t wait for the artich choke to fully flush out a bunch of its blooms and to eat all those onions i love my onions onions onions onions one thing I didn’t plant I like completely forgot that I had in the first video was the kale that was going to be an experiment i ended up just forgetting to plant it all together and so it is no longer with us it is somewhere in a compost pile but overall I uh you know if you guys have any questions about this or anything else in the yard I wish I would have cleaned it up a little bit more for you guys but hey you know when you got time to make a video you make a video so stay tuned for all the updates and let me know if you have questions below or if you want a video about something in particular I’m happy to consider it [Music]