I’m QUITTING My Garden: 6 Ways To Beat GARDEN BURNOUT

Peak summer heat is here, and I’ll be honest: I want to quit my garden. Garden burnout is common this time of year, and many gardeners slow down or outright quit gardening as a result. This is a mistake, because quitting gardening now means losing the harvests we worked so hard for in spring, and our garden will not be in shape to transition to a fall garden. In this video, I’ll show you 6 ways to beat garden burnout that I use to stay strong and keep moving forward.

Don’t let gardening burnout get you down. By following these gardening tips, you can push through the hot weather and heat waves. If you do this, you will be rewarded with an incredible garden to transition to the fall gardening season. Fall gardening is key to helping seasonal depression in my experience, and many vegetables you plant in fall will stand into winter so you’ll have a winter garden, too. This strategy has been key to manage my seasonal affective disorder, which many of us suffer with in the cold weather.

Drip Irrigation Install Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIHHHsx0JPcYgD4xXzA96usL&si=XhCNykJaPix_p4t5
How To Use Shade Cloth: https://youtu.be/cO-U1wYGZ8Q?si=gPLhuhM5OLj4qjGD

My Drip Depot Affiliate store** for all your drip irrigation needs: https://aff.dripdepot.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=372

I use the following products* to grow vegetables and fruit trees in my garden:
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Jobe’s Organic Vegetable Fertilizer (4lbs): https://amzn.to/45YHmh2
Espoma Plant Tone (36lbs): https://amzn.to/3Zgk98f
Jobe’s Bone Meal (4lb): https://amzn.to/3uC5klp
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Alaska Fish Fertilizer (Gallon): https://amzn.to/3XP5EHU
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Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3KyPTzg
Jack’s All Purpose 20-20-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3MQ4I2A
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Why I Want To Quit Gardening Right Now
3:28 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #1
4:47 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #2
6:01 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #3
8:01 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #4
10:23 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #5
11:47 Stopping Garden Burnout: Tip #6
15:22 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about how to stop garden burnout before it starts, want to know about 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 some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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Organza Bags (Tomato-size) https://amzn.to/36fy4Re

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6.5 Inch Hand Pruner Pruning Shears https://amzn.to/3jHI1yL
Japanese Pruning Saw with Blade https://amzn.to/3wjpw6o

Double Tomato Hooks with Twine https://amzn.to/3Awptr9
String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
Expandable Vinyl Garden Tape https://amzn.to/3jL7JCI

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

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© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #burnout #vegetablegardening

what’s growing on gardeners it’s the middle of July and the heat and humidity is absolutely brutal here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina and right about now honestly I really want to quit gardening and I’m willing to guess many of you do as well if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spread shop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated despite the fact that we all need to eat year round gardening is considered by most to be a seasonal activity we can see this reflected in Google Trends data interest in gardening begins to spike in March but shockingly it peaks in late May and begins dropping like a lead balloon in June and July when the actual harvests begin why does interest in gardening drop off so early in the year personally I think it’s psychological in Winter most of us are confined to our homes because it’s just too cold outside and the Cloudy gray skies have us depressed when Winter Winds down we are so eager to get outdoors and feel warm temperatures and sunny skies again so we get really excited for the new gardening season and we take an interest in it and get all gung-ho but then what happens summer arrives we are no longer suffering from seasonal depression and it is starting to get downright hot outside our interest in gardening begins to WAN because now it is too hot outside and we don’t want to be out in the sun doing physical labor anymore so despite the fact that our Gardens we longed for so deeply in the winter are finally starting to bear fruit we just lose interest and we Let Them Fall by the wayside gardening burnout is real folks but what happens after that summer begins to wind down and the cooler more pleasant fall weather approaches and we find ourselves with not much of a garden left because we gave up on our Gardens when it was too hot outside as the days grow order we fall back into the pattern of seasonal depression and we repeat this vicious cycle over and over again this is the story of a seasonal Gardener I want you all to know that I feel this way too you are not alone my Zeal for gardening is far beyond that of the average person I’ve not only turned gardening into a yearound lifestyle but it’s practically become a home business for me to not only maintain my garden in the way I do but to do all of this filming and production that comes along with this YouTube channel so come this time of year I’m absolutely exhausted burnt out and it’s so unbelievably hot and humid where I live that I don’t want to be out in the garden anymore either I want to quit my garden too so on this video I’m going to give you some of the techniques that I use to help keep these negative feelings at Bay and push through this otherwise difficult Time of the Season why is this important because if you can push through the hottest part of the summer keep your plants alive and find the energy to start start a fall Garden you will be rewarded with the greatest time of year to Garden if you enjoy spring gardening wait until you try fall gardening the weather is better the insect and disease pressure goes away and you will find ways to extend your Harvest well into the winter which will help keep you healthier mentally and physically cutting back on that seasonal depression it is so worth it trust me this is how I stop Garden burnout this time of year the first thing I recommend is is to dedicate 1 hour per day every single day for you to be out in your garden and make that the hour the hour of dusk the sun has finally gone behind the trees and now my garden has been cast in entirely shade now is the time that I want to go out into my garden and do my work because out here in the sun even though it’s 6:00 p.m. it is still 90° and it is way too hot I don’t want to be out working in the Sun so I save my 1 hour a day that I’m willing to put in to hard manual labor well hard manual labor in terms of gardening this time of year wait until the golden hour when it’s very comfortable and pleasant to be outside because no matter where you live even if you live out in the desert Southwest where it’s 110° during the day there will get to be a fairly Pleasant part in the evening where it’s in the 70 to 80° range and with the Sun not completely beating down on you it’s actually fairly comfortable so dedicate that 1 hour every single day to work out in your garden but make it this dusk hour that is the best time to be working out in your garden take advantage of these long days of summer and do your manual labor then my second tip is to Rally your energy and start yourself some fall transplants but pretend it’s winter and start your seeds indoors this way you can do it in a controlled air conditioned environment when it’s still hot out in the middle of summer when you don’t want to be outside but what will happen is by the time the transplants mature and they get to be about 6 weeks old well it’s going to be a lot more pleasant for you to transplant these things outdoors for your fall garden and this is a little bit of a psychological war that you’re playing on yourself because if you don’t start transplants you probably won’t start a fall Garden but if you begin transplants and you have those plants growing inside your house well now you are going to feel obligated to plant them out into your garden when it’s ready so when you start these transplants indoors you are basically mentally committing yourself to starting a fall Garden which you will be very happy that you did but because you’re pretending it’s winter and you’re doing the first 6 weeks of work indoors you don’t have to deal with any of the hot weather outside so it’s a great way to pretty much guarantee yourself that you will keep growing well into fall but you won’t have to deal with the difficult conditions outside in summer trick number three that I use to push through this difficult hot time of Summer and keep gardening is to install shade cloth above in my garden I’ve been recommending shade cloth very aggressively to gardeners over the last three or four years and one of the points that I Tred to make is that shade cloth isn’t just for keeping your plants healthy and low stress it’s also for you because you get to work underneath this shade cloth as well it is a different world working underneath the shade cloth it can be absolute nightmarish conditions outside in the full sun on a clear sunny day but under this shade cloth it is downright comfortable even when it’s 95 to 100° outside I think the reason why a lot of gardeners are resistant to installing shade cloth is it seems very intimidating to install it overhead and it is true that the initial installation is the most difficult part because you have to do it when it’s pretty hot out and it takes about an hour or to to put up when it’s a giant tarp this size so what I think I’m going to do over the course of the winter is I’m going to run a permanant retractable shade cloth system where I’m going to run some steel cables overhead with some carabiners and I’m going to install them in such a way that I can run it out on the steel cables during the summer and then I can basically push it back in like an awning where I can wrinkle it back up and then zip tie it so it’ll hold throughout the other 9 months a year when I’m not using it so make sure you you stay tuned this winter because I’m going to design a system that accomplishes this I’m going to do it in the cooler weather and prepare myself so it’s easy to drag out in the summer and for the time being I will link to a video both above in the corner and down in the video description below that will show you exactly how I’ve installed shade cloth to date I highly recommend it for allpurpose gardening during the summer I’ll also Place direct links down in the video description for the exact shade cloth I use it comes in many sizes from small and inexpensive to very very very large and still pretty affordable tip number four is to begin to remove old dying crops from your garden if you’re like me you probably have a bunch of leftover crops from late winter early spring that are either past their prime or outright dead and this makes our garden look like a mess it makes it look very large and intimidating it makes us not want to work in it because all of those crops can seem overwhelming and also those old crops draw in insect pests and they also can spread disease so by removing them it will not only make things easier for us psychologically but it will also keep a lot of those pests and disease problems away so for example I have some old kale here that is a year and a half old and it’s just gone through its life cycle and because it’s old and dying back it’s being consumed by white flies which are colonizing these old kale plants so I have to get rid of them I have these old dying determinant dwarf Tomatoes right here that are doing nothing but accumulating disease that I have to get rid of and I have this old lettuce bed that unfortunately bolted on me and turned bitter well before I could eat it all and all that’s going to do is go to seed and litter the ground and make tons of unwanted volunteer weeds the next year when Gardens become overgrown and unkempt they can appear so overwhelming that you don’t even want to set foot in them by using the Pleasant weather dusk hour to your advantage you can go outside in your garden and just use that really Pleasant weather time to pull out some of the old plants and after a few nights you’ll start making a lot of progress and things will look a lot less overwhelming cleaning up your garden using this time to your advantage will make you much more likely to want to do more gardening because you’ll clear out all that old stuff and everything will look so much more manageable so in about 45 minutes I removed all of these old dead and dying plants and as a result the garden is so much less cluttered so much less intimidating and so much more inviting whereas everything was overgrown now everything is nice and cleared out you can see the empty beds that are pretty much ready for rehabilitation so in the next nice cool dusk hour that I get I’m going to backfill these beds with a few bags of compost and then I am going to tarp them like you see right here and they will sit for 2 months where they will be preparing themselves for the fall planting which brings me to my fifth tip tarp your beds when they are not in use particularly if they are raised garden beds what I do to rehabilitate my raised garden beds is I put down a whole bunch of compost on top of them about 2 or 3 Ines and then I let them sit for several months but putting the tarp above them actually helps lock in that compost so when we get our heavy summer and early fall rains it doesn’t wash out all the nutrients in the raised beds because they’re very prone to wash out specifically when there is nothing growing in them and The Roots aren’t able to grab hold and prevent soil erosion so tarping them helps prevent that wash out it will also help prevent the tops of your soil from being bleached by the UV of the sun which can be very damaging if your beds are not mulched and finally from a psychological standpoint having the beds tarped and sealed off it’s almost like they’re not really there it shrinks the size of the Garden in your mind because they’re basically unavailable and that makes it a lot easier for you to process and manage so by placing this tarp you’re basically reducing the size of your garden with this time of year might be beneficial for your mental health these tarps that I use are absolutely perfect for the size of raised beds that I have which are 4 ft x 10 ft I’ll place a link down in the video description for them I think they’re 6×10 they are UV resistant they are waterproof they’re really nice and affordable perfect for raised beds and the sixth and possibly biggest piece of advice I can give you to stop Garden burnout before it starts is to install drip irrigation to your garden I don’t care if you have an earth bed garden a raised bed garden contain or Gardens installing drip irrigation may be the best thing you can do so you don’t burn yourself out in the summer heat based on my own personal experience I believe that there is no Garden task more monotonous and exhausting during the summer than watering like I said earlier in the video we only have about 1 hour’s worth of physical labor in Us in the garden when it gets really hot especially if we work full-time so if we have to spend that one hour that we get painstakingly and exhaustingly watering our garden we will never make any progress day after day we will just be chasing our Tails doing that monotonous task instead of doing things that help us move forward imagine if we could automate the process and free up that hour so we could actually do fun things and have real progress so I urge you beg you to install drip irrigation to your garden yes it will take a few hours for you to install drip irrigation but it will save you hundreds of hours of manual watering in the long run yes will have to spend a little bit of money setting up the drip irrigation to buy all the parts but it will pay for itself in no time if you have a water bill in one summer you may pay for the entire system maybe even more and I’m telling you automating this process takes the most monotonous heat stroking task out of your summer garden I will make sure that I will link to a playlist above where I show you all the different methods of installing drip irrigation from running a main line to installing it to raised garden beds or to a contain container garden I’ll also place a link down in the video description to my drip irrigation affiliate store that has every drip part Under the Sun that is extremely affordable and they are absolute top quality just an awesome company I built all of my stuff using their parts and it’s just incredible and that is how I have personally found success stopping Garden burnout and pushing forward during this difficult time of the year I understand how difficult it can be for many gardeners to keep going when it gets hot in the dead of Summer like this I derive a significant portion of my livelihood from doing this and keeping my garden alive is very important to me and still it is very difficult for me so I can only imagine how difficult it is for people that aren’t as highly motivated but I do recommend you do this because gardening is a lot like running where once you push through that wall you’ll hit your second wind and then once you hit that second wind you will be so happy that you did it because you will be rewarded with a beautiful Garden where you will be outside eating fresh vegetables probably into the winter and that will be better for your physical health your mental health in the long run you will just be so happy that you did it believe me it is worth the extra effort now to reap the rewards later in the year and delayed gratification is just the best type of gratification so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that 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 I’ll Place links to them down in the video description for everything I use in real life in my garden they are all linked down in my Amazon storefront link so expand the video description click on the Amazon link and you’ll see everything I use in real life and while you’re down there please check out my spread shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video oh boy if only Dale could see this he would go absolutely bananas Dale we have a bunny Intruder Dale come look oh boy oh what has Daddy gotten Dale into now what do you think about that buddy let’s go get that little stinker invading your property go get him I bet you’s gone now buddy yeah he’s gone you scared him away good boy Mr hunting dog good boy