I shared in a previous post about my top five gardening fails and growing from them. I’m going to continue sharing my fails to help you not make the same, encourage you to keep going even if you fail with something, and to always keep learning from gardening. The only way you will fail with gardening is if you try one time, fail, and give up. You don’t fail because of the failed project. You would fail from giving up. Keep going from making gardening fails.
1: Caring for Houseplants
Some people have a green thumb for house plants. Me, nope. I have my share of gardening fails at keeping these indoor plants alive, unless it is seedlings. I’ve tried growing orchids, overwintering flowers, poinsettias, succulents and other house plants. I tend to kill all these.
My main problem with house plants is knowing how much to water, and also watering consistently. Besides watering seedlings daily, I’m terrible at watering. It is just a task of gardening that I don’t like to do all the time. I live in an environment where it naturally rains for my plants, except for droughts here and there.
And watering seedlings indoors took some time to realize what works for me. The first few years, I ended up overwatering all the time. I would be bottom-watering, but leaving the excess water in the tray for a few days. It took until this year to do it right, where I use misting and some small amounts of bottom watering.
The biggest thing with house plants is knowing what type of light they need, as well as how much water they take.
2:Planting Peony Bare Roots
I always get excited to plant peony roots. When I first started planting them though, I didn’t realize the bare roots had a top and bottom. Yes, it may seem obvious, but I didn’t know. Peonies have their root side and their stem side. Putting the stem side on the bottom is going to cause the peony not to grow, or to take years to establish and produce blooms. Oops.
But this was not my only mistakes with peonies, just one of many gardening fails. Years later, I was still messing up planting the peony bare roots. I would tell myself, no, I don’t plan on planting peonies this year. Then, I ended up near mid-spring deciding, oooh, I need these peony varieties while shopping at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart or Tractor Supply. I didn’t need them yet. It was an impulse buy because who can resist beautiful peonies.
It may not even be mid-spring when I’d plant. So, the peonies did not have the right conditions of cooler weather to begin growing that year.
In 2022, we had such a wet spring that I wasn’t able to plant without following into a swampy, muddy mess. I ended up planting the peony bare roots in nursery pots to start. I didn’t get those transplanted until May planting. Some didn’t survive. Others died in a drought after their plantings.
I want lots of peonies for cut flowers for myself and market, so I plant to buy some this fall for a trial planting. Our fall months have been warmer than other years, as well as more consistent with rainfall. I think the biggest lesson is to double check the planting procedures, as well as being intentional when buying them versus impulsive. It pays to have a plan, even if it means a larger budget.
3: Buying Rotted Bulbs on Clearance
Ha! I can’t believe I even have to share this. But, I use to be the type that sees clearance, and go, ooh. I can use that! I can afford it now! Spending $20 on half rotted bulbs is not saving money. It may save money individually on the product, but for the overall garden space, it is not done intentionally. Spending $20 intentionally is going to go way further than spending $20 impulsively on plants.
Now, I’m not saying to never buy some fun plants on clearance. But these should still be live plants, not dead bulbs that have no energy or life left to them.
So many times bulbs, corms, and rhizomes, on clearance have become too hot in their bags on the shelves. They have begun to grow, having green growth. Not having any nutrients from the soil or proper sunlight, the bulbs die off. If you do find some on clearance, you may be lucky and find some healthy bulbs. But for the most part, I find that clearance bulbs are rotting or dried out and no longer have life or energy in them.
To grow from these gardening fails, I have stopped buying bulbs and such from big box stores. They’re not as healthy or large as ones I can buy online. The online orders tend to be more expensive, but the quality and the variety is so much more.
4: Not Preventing the Weeds
I’m still not perfect at preventing weeds, but it has been years since I’ve had terrible weed problems where a garden is absolutely a catastrophe. I mean like weeks as tall as the unstaked tomato plants. The first year I discovered using newspapers as a mulch was in late July, I pulled out the tall weeds from between the plants and rows, laid down the newspaper, pruned the tomatoes, and covered the newspaper with mulch. I did this for a few evenings until all the tomatoes no longer had weeds.
Just because I didn’t start the season with this weed preventive measure, that doesn’t mean I should have just said “oh well” that summer. Tackling these weeds and using newspaper the first time during the growing season later on when it should have been taught helped me plan weed preventive measures the following growing season. Don’t wait around to learn a new skill. It may be hard the first time when it is done later in the season, but trying it will teach you to be prepared for the following seasons.
Every season since, I’ve used newspapers, landscape fabric, leaves, and wood mulches to combat those weeds. I took one of redundent and epic gardening fails, and turned it into a lesson to learn a new strategy to apply for all my gardening years afterwards.
5: Overwatering Seedlings
Bottom watering is great! Right! Uhh . . . Not when you let the plants sit in water. And I’ve had my share of doing this. Some things now just make sense, don’t let plants sit in water. It will drown their roots. Their leaves will turn yellow. And their roots will start dying off and disappearing.
But, seeing other gardeners on YouTube and blogs bottom watering and adding a good bit of water, I never realized at first that the plants are not sitting in the water. I always feared them being dried out and dying. But soaking them so long in water, not healthy either.
I overcame this problem when I started to mist my seedlings. I bottom water some in extreme cases, but for the most part I water by misting the small plants.
6: Taking Cuttings Above the Node
One year, I watched a video about how to reuse the stems from the pinched snapdragons to produce more. I had experience with taking cuttings from petunias, so I was excited to try pinching the snapdragons, and then taking those for cuttings.
Ehhhh! It didn’t work the way I wanted it to. When pinching cut flowers the cut is made above the node. A node is that little bump in the stem. Cutting above the node encourages the main plant to branch out versus having one stem. For taking cuttings, it is important to make the cut below the node. This way the new future plant can begin growing roots after being dipped into a rooting hormone. Although it was disappointing to try something new, take the time to dip all those cuttings into root hormone, out of all my gardening fails, this one . . . it didn’t bother me as much. I had an abundance of snapdragons as it was.
Trying to grow a new snapdragon when it didn’t have a good area to start growing new roots did not work out. What it would take is to first pinch the snapdragons above the node. And then cut below another node on the stem that has been cut off. Afterwards, it can be dipped into root hormone to be rooted in.
7: Leaving Strawberries in Container Over Winter
After my strawberry planting fiasco, I ended up moving some plants into containers. The containers were a mix of peat moss, perlite, and compost. The plants during the growing season were able to grow and spread their runners.
Fall came, and I was cleaning out the garden spaces and hunting in the middle of October before starting a graduate class. We also started building our greenhouse at this time. I ended up forgetting to do something with the strawberries in containers; I didn’t cover them; I didn’t transplant the strawberry plants somewhere into the garden; I didn’t move them indoors. Nothing . . . I did nothing to help them through the winter months. Gardening fails can just be the result of having too many projects going on at one time. If we don’t choose what to prioritize, our life will do it for us anyways, whether we intend for that or not.
In the end, a few did survive with their green leaves, but they were down further in the container than the other. Containers freezer quicker than the ground temperature. With being through a winter with sub-zero temperatures, they didn’t have that much of a chance.
8: Using Too Much Peat Moss in Raised Beds
Ever heard of Mel’s Mix? Mel Bartholomew wrote a book on Square Foot Gardening which covers intentional raised bed gardening the provides the right about of gardening and food. In this book, he shares his mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 vermiculate (or perlite).
I tried this mix. And although it does create it to be nice and fluffy, I am so use to using real dirt. Soil that’s from the ground. Mel’s Mix works, but for me where I like to depend more on rainfall than irrigation and watering, my raised bed dries out quickly.
Our one raised bed actually uses quality top soil from our last homestead. We transported this raised bed and its soil from our last homestead to our current one. The plants I add to this bed do tremendously better than my bed with Mel’s Mix.
For my gardening, I need more substance to my raised beds, and less peat moss. I want my soil to hold water, as much as it is easy to work in.
9: Scorching My Large Aloe Plants
One summer, I placed these small to medium sized aloes outside for natural sunlight. They grew in size tremendously!!! Ever see those huge aloe plants for sale. Yes, mine grew to that size.
I even babied them with cactus soil mix and cactus fertilizer.
The next year, I decided to do the same thing. But it was a different home. Different levels of sunlight. The sunlight on our front porch was way more intense than our last home. I scorched my aloe plants.
By the end of the season, one plant died, while the other one was just doing okay. These plants need a transition period versus being stuck out all day in the bright sunlight. Although I did not rate these gardening fails in order, I find that killing a such large and lovely aloe plant was one of the worst mistakes I’ve made. A simple solution of putting the plants on the sunporch to begin with would have kept them alive and healthy.
10: Over Fertilizing Plants
Growing up and some of my first homesteading gardening years, I used the stronger fertilizer. I was warned by my mom, my grandmother, and my husband in all sorts of different years to not apply too much. It will burn the plants.
I knew it would. I really did. But, I still ended up adding too much fertilizer to the tomato plants. I’d even make a ring around the plant intentionally not putting too much. It was still too much.
My plants didn’t end up dying, but it was enough to stunt them. Think about this way. If you go out to eat at a buffet or smorgasbord, after eating all you can eat, you are stunted from the amount of food you put into your stomach. That’s what over fertilizing can do. The plants cannot in a healthy manner absorb all those nutrients.
What solved this is never using the full strength synthetic fertilizer again. I allow my husband to apply it because he is able to get the right amount. I don’t have a problem with the usage of it, but it is something that I can’t work with on my own account.
Organic Fertilizers Work Great
What I choose to use instead is compost, liquid fertilizers that will be diluted into water, and Espoma organic fertilizers. I will add compost to the garden’s soil when we rototill the garden. I mostly use liquid fertilizers for seedlings with their true leaves and for fertilizers a couple of times in the summer months. This includes Miracle Grow mixes, Espoma liquid fertilizers, and fish fertilizer. Fish fertilizer does tend to stink, so I would advise not using it in the main part of your house.
Once I tried using Espoma’s organic fertilizer for tomatoes, I go with their brand for all sorts of fertilizers. Being organic, it is lower percentages of NPK. It doesn’t burn the plant. Laura from Garden Answer puts it right into the hole she is planting in and it never burns her plants. I have done the same from roses, berry bushes, vegetables, and cut flowers. It doesn’t burn the roots. Nor does it kill the plants. It is one of my favorite gardening fertilizers.
Keep Going with Gardening
The mindset of having a perfect garden is going to create an empty garden. It is going to keep you from trying things out. If you want to garden, a garden with weeds and vegetables is better than a garden with nothing planted. While trying things out mistakes may be made, or external causes may kill your plants. Keep trying, reflecting, and then trying again with something different involved.
If people stop by for a visit, they don’t notice all the plants that you kill. They notice all the plants that you grow. I love showing people my gardens. I’ve had comments about how they would like a vegetable garden like mine or they complement certain aspects they want to adopt. I have faith they do take their gardens to the next level.
I wouldn’t be where I’m at with gardening, which is at a highly passionate level where gardening yearly is just part of my way of life, if it were not for the growth mindset of always wanting to grow something and keep on growing until I succeed greatly at it. Even some of the greatest gardeners are still trying new things, and sometimes failing at them too. That’s okay.
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