Four gardening mistakes and how to fix them
If you follow me on Pinterest, then you saw that my biggest gardening mistake last year was me. I neglected everything. I got overwhelmed, something had to give and unfortunately, it was the garden.
The rest of my gardening mistakes were pretty typical mistakes that I already knew I shouldn’t do but didn’t have processes in place to prevent them. Here are my four main gardening mistakes and how I’m going to prevent them.
Watering logistics
My apartment has a shared yard including three garden beds. When we moved in the garden beds were severely neglected so in the first growing season I took over the two beds closest to my section of the building. There is a water spigot close by and I can watch their progress from my window. A lone bed on the far side was begging to be adopted. I had such success with the closer two, I thought I could easily adopt it… haha
I’m located in Oregon and the rain almost exclusively does all the watering for me from spring through almost mid-summer. I did not test to see if the hose could reach the far bed when I was planning, but I tried to put more drought-tolerant plants over there just in case. Well, the hose could reach about half the bed while on the jet setting on the hand sprayer. I didn’t love the way the water was hitting the plants so I resorted to filling my kids’ buckets and hauling them across the yard. It wasn’t a big deal until we had an unusual heat streak and I had to water almost every day. I’m just chalking it up as a loss and I’m not going to do anything with that bed this year. I’ll ask my new neighbor if she wants it because she is closer to it. Last year she had some potted plants on her back patio and has a water spigot by her back door. Hopefully, I can enjoy it from afar. I’m going to stick with the two closer beds that I can easily water. I will also be researching self-watering systems like using old wine/Martinelli bottles so I don’t have to water as often.
Pest watch
Pests have never been a problem for me so I did not have a routine or system to check thoroughly for them…like under the leaves. The far bed had my squash and I didn’t recognize the danger of the squash bug invasion under the leaves. I saw there were a few eggs, but I didn’t think much of it. I’m trying to garden somewhat organic so I thought “oh just leave it, let nature grow some”. But nature took advantage of my negligence. The squash bugs destroyed all six of the squash pants I had. Once I realized how destructive the bugs were it was too late. The replacements failed, the infestation was too great. The area was just too far gone and my squash dreams were squashed. My humble harvest of two zucchinis will make me more diligent to check under leaves for signs of other pests. Pest damage was the biggest gardening mistakes to try to overcome. I’m going to check for pests every few days.
Pest tip
Squirrels were topping my plants, but once I put these fake snakes in the garden beds they no longer bothered my plants. I made sure to move, rotate beds and at times partially bury/hide the fake snakes to make them more believable to the squirrels. These particular snakes started to fall apart after sitting in the sun and I expect to replace them next year giving them a two year life. I’m going to experiment with other deterrents (like fake owls) as the snakes fall apart.
Busy season in my personal life
Another gardening mistake is I tried to take on too much in my personal life as well as growing more in the garden. We got a puppy in March… right before the growing season started. Most of my time was dominated by monitoring the puppy and the kids. I felt like I had a referee almost every moment of the day for a solid three months. Either the puppy was doing something she shouldn’t have or the kids were doing something with the puppy. This year the kids and the puppy are older so it’s been easier to manage my time during the day, I don’t foresee any large life changes that would occupy my time like our puppy did. The only possible change would be buying different land to build on-be sure to watch out for that upcoming post.
Overcrowding
I too excited and tried to grow as much as I could in the new space that I had with the far bed which was too much for my space. The sunflowers were in a new location and they got bigger than I anticipated. I grew many new things and placed them too close to neighboring plants. The cosmos dominated whatever space they were in (and they were in two). I should have researched more on spacing needs (or reread my gardening for beginners post), but I learn best through trial and error with specific plants: The size of plants is dependent on your growing space-how rich your soil is, sun coverage, how much water they receive, and how close they are to each other. This year I’m going to take what I learned from this simple gardening mistake and attempt some vertical gardening to increase my space and still get the plants I want. I’m also going to be more mindful of how I plant my flowers.
Bonus
This is not a mistake, but a different approach to reduce stress. This year I am going to be primarily buying starts, not try to grow all my plants from seed. I don’t have a great space to grow them, I don’t have grow lights, and my timing was off on up-potting my seedlings. I’m going to save myself the unnecessary stress and buy starts from a local gal who sells cheap organic starts. I’ll probably end up starting some flowers from seed and any direct sow like lettuce, carrots, beets, etc. It does not make me a lesson of a gardener if I buy my starts versus starting my own from seed.
Let me know if you’ve made these gardening mistakes before and what you did to fix them!
Heather
