It’s Been a Season – The Garden Saves the House!

I garden because I want to taste delicious things. I garden because I want every excuse to walk barefoot in the grass with the sun blessing down on me, and end the day sweaty with a dirt smudged face. I garden because I like sitting in the tomato cave I made, same as I played house in the trees when I was five. I garden because one of my favorite memories, one I will be replaying in my mind as I review my last moments of this world, is digging potatoes with my grandfather.

The season a gardener never wants but eventually gets arrived this year for us. Being someone who is online, all the time, and watches youtube garden content, all the time, I am inundated every year seeing the various garden calamities of my garden friends. I have always felt very lucky. Partly as a function of where I garden, I just do not impacted by many afflictions that plague other gardeners. While South Dakota can get very humid in the summer (dewpoints in the 60’s and 70’s are common), it’s not humid enough for long enough to suffer greatly from the many blights and fungal diseases that take down an southern garden by mid-summer. Also partly because I trust my processes, am open to change and research, gardening goes pretty well for me, admittedly.

Every calamity I witness, I thank the gods for my good fortune. I have always felt that things often went inexplicably better for me in the garden than they often do for others. Squash vine borers the only calamity I could confidently say I have the worst of any gardener. But I’ve known for years my turn was coming, unfairly blessed or not.

It did, on June 20th, 2024. Over two and a half days, my garden received almost a foot of rain. 11.5 inches, to be exact. The sump pump engaged, only the second time since we have lived in this house, a decade now. The sump pump stayed engaged for days. Did its job, successfully.

Are there sump pump gods I can thank?

Video of Flooding – Less Than One Minute View Time

But, the garden is flooding.

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The sump outlet pipe was put in the very best place to protect the the largest section of garden, while keeping the water away from the house. That meant allowing the water to follow the dahlia path down the backyard. We live on a significant slope; it would have been impossible to route the water anywhere else.

Dahlia tubers don’t like wet feet and unfortunately, they were drowning. Within a few weeks, I had lost at least half of my dahlias along the path from flooding, and in another section the herbicide in the runoff killed more dahlias. I recently completed the inventory of the dahlias tubers that remained. In the end I lost more than 2/3rd of the varieties I’ve built up over the past 6 years.

Part of the tomato patch was also flooded, yet I only lost a tomato plant or two. The flood and tainted run off eventually damaged my melons, although the hugel in front of the melon patch did provide some protection.

The good news? The garden saved the house. I have trees and shrubs on every side of the house. The home structure itself is surrounded on all sides by garden. All those roots took a portion of the water trying to come in and overwhelm the sump system.

My neighbors directly west of me, on the hilltop, had severe water damage from a flooded basement. The neighbors next to them, catty-corner from me? Same. Intek and an industrial sized dumpster came out for them, the damage was so significant. Neighbors to my south? All of them, down the street, had flood damage. The only homes spared were me, the neighbor I share a yard with (divided by my row of lilacs) and the neighbor behind me, downstream from my garden.

So I thank my large maple trees, my pear trees, the row of lilacs and the all the gardens in my little suburban oasis for saving my basement. My dahlias and melons made the ultimate sacrifice.

Final Large Harvest of 2024 – Day Before First Fall Frost – Photo Credit C.Elisabeth at 8thDeadlySin ORG

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So how did the rest of the garden do? Meh. While the flood did not kill my tomato plants and pepper plants, the herbicide runoff did significantly damage many plants and severely reduce the harvest. The telltale curling and leathering of the leaves doesn’t lie. There were three sections of the garden that did better, lessons learned. The rose garden, the main garden and the SE fence-line garden. One of those sections gave me most of the dahlias I was able to save. Those three sections were located on more level portions of the yard, as well as being less impacted by run-off from other locations. Away from the primary run-off path.

Interestingly, this is the best year for dahlia tuber production, of the plants that did survive. I got more tubers, and larger tubers, than I ever had before. I need to rebuild my dahlia tuber inventory, but I am in a better position to increase tuber production of the new tubers, next season.

Factors that impacted tuber production

• Balanced fertilizing from planting through August
• No/low Nitrogen fertilizer throughout September
• More watering during peak growth June-August
• Do not harvest tubers until after the first hard frost, they need that time in-ground
• Tubers harvested mid-November this year, it was a warm fall

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A Tribute to the Sacrificial Dahlias

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Well, I guess one of my favorite dahlia shots, Dirt Road Wild, will be getting some business this coming spring!

Dirt Road Wild Dahlia Shop – https://dirtroad-wild.myshopify.com

There is always next year!

All plants grown in the high wind prairie, Midwest, in macro-climate zone 5(ish). Average dewpoint in summer is around 60. Soil is a loamy clay. Although my preference is organic, I have used commercial fertilizers from time to time. Gardening personality relaxed and experimental, purist about very little. Growing Days approximately 140.

I like to think about what might be possible, and just give it a go ~Craig LeHoullier 2022

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