When gardening, it is not going to be perfect. Plants are living things, and they can die. A lot of hard work, time, and energy goes into gardening, but things happen where the plants do end up dying. Sometimes it is the cause of our own hands. Other times, the weather, bugs, rodents, or whatever else nature has to throw at us attacks our plants. Even when we take protective measures to protect our plants, we may not know everything as we try out one method. Or, sometimes that method doesn’t work for us. There is so much information and knowledge when it comes to gardening that it is hard to know at first what is the best thing to do. Gardening comes with mistakes and growth.
The worse thing to do is expecting to make it perfect every time. Having a beautiful garden is not the same as having a perfect garden. Weeds will come. Plants will die from frosts or extreme heat. Too much fertilizer may be added. Transplants became root bound before planting out. Perennials die over winter from the negative degree weather.
Plants are vivacious. Sometimes when we think they are goners, they perk back up. Other times we intentionally kill them and remove them, and they still come back. Hello, lilacs. Plants are going to do what they can do. At times, they can no longer live, but they do their best to survive, even in the worst environments for them.
As gardeners, we want to care, protect, and provide for our plants as much as we can. Failure isn’t plants dying on us, but the act of giving up on learning and applying the best practices for specific plants. As plants grow to provide beautiful blooms and harvest, so too do we as gardeners grow in our knowledge and skills with horticulture.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my years of gardening, but I have learned so much in the process. People see how many plants I grow and keep alive, but they don’t see how many plants I kill. Here are my top five mistakes in gardening I’ve made.
1: Rototilling Wet Spots
My young adult gardens consisted of flat ground on top of ridge where the water always drained. Our first homestead garden as a young married couple was a relatively flat spot on a hillside. The water drained from the garden and made other parts of the yard a swamp. The first year for our garden at our new homestead, it was smaller, but we didn’t really have any wet spot issues. Just one low spot where I planted the dahlias.
Then ambitious me wanted a larger garden. I love the size of our garden, and with our weed preventive measures, the size is fine. What is not okay is that we rototilled some low spots of the yard into the garden space. The top part of the garden that has the highest elevation had a low spot. We filled in the one low spot with some dirt, but it also created a new puddle of water in the wet seasons and winter right below it. This in turn would create small streams of water running throughout the garden. The usual wet spot on the east side, it became a swamp again.
The east side of the garden, which was a new addition to the original garden, does not drain water well at all. There must be a low spot in the center along the east side because this is where it can flood the most, as well as being the last area in the garden to dry out.
We are in the process of never rototilling the top again, planting it with grass seed. We are also using the wettest part of the garden for growing pumpkins again. It is what we did with the space last year, and it worked. We can’t rototill this spot in the early spring. It needs to dry out. One of the last things I plant are pumpkins, so that’s what goes in that space.
2: Planting Strawberries in Wet Spots
Guess what I planted in this terrible east side wet spot of the garden before the pumpkins. Yep, bare root strawberries. In my defense, the soil was completely dry and it was my first time planting strawberries.
The day after I planted them, the rain came. The strawberries were under water. My husband ended up pulling some of the underwater strawberries. Then I came home, and finished moving the strawberries.
I moved most into containers filled with either a mixture of peat moss and compost or just peat moss. After the soil dried out, I moved the plants back into the ground, or into a raised garden bed. Don’t use peat moss only. It doesn’t retain moisture.
3: Planting Strawberries in Inches of Compost
I’m telling you. My first year planting strawberries was a catastrophe. When I planted these strawberries back out into the garden, I knew strawberries liked compost. Why I didn’t mix the compost in with the native soil, I don’t know. I planted these already traumatized bare root strawberries into inches upon inches of compost.
I used the compost to create a higher elevation bed so that the water, if it flooded again, would not flood the plants. Great intentions. Terrible results. I essentially created a compost pile in the garden that roasted the strawberry plants from too much moisture, which created too much heat.
I tried saving these strawberries by pulling them out, and potting them up again or transplanting them. At this point for my own sanity, I should have given up, but I didn’t. I tried all sorts of things, and although the strawberries didn’t survive, welp, I grew as a gardener.
4: Not Protecting Roses Over Winter
I’m new at growing roses. I went from absolutely hating roses in any garden space to wanting to grow them as cut flowers. I was planning to just start with two David Austin Roses. Get some experience in. Then my husband was sweet and kept buying me roses from Lowe’s. The first year, they survived a drought-like summer. The landscape fabric kept the soil rather moist. The had beautiful blooms, some that smelled absolutely amazing.
Then this winter . . . Deer eating the leaves. Negative degree weather. Harsh, cold winds. Roses can do well throughout a winter. But all the roses I’ve seen others grow in my life, they had some protection from the house. My roses would get the brunt of wind.
Majority of our rose bushes have blackened or dark brown stems. Some still have some green near the bottom. The green stems are still alive. I should have researched more in how to winterize roses, but again, it was the first time, the first year. After this downfall, I’m going to do my best in learning how to prune and care for these roses that have some green, as well as look more into supplies that I’d need for those harsh winter temperatures.
5: Hardening Off Peppers Too Soon
We have a sunporch on the north side of our house. It brings in lots of light, but not really much heat in early spring. My peppers were rather large being started 12 weeks before the average last frost. I ended up needing more room under the grow lights, so I moved these to the sun porch.
Some of those nights, the temperature dropped, not enough to kill the pepper plants, but enough to stop their growth. When transplanting them outdoors, they had some time where they were not growing as quickly as I have seen in other years.
It is best to double check the current week’s weather, as well as double checking to see how low of temperature the plant can actually go. Sometimes they can survive a chill, but that doesn’t mean they continue to grow in that setting.
Not My Only Gardening Mistakes
These five are not my only gardening mistakes, but they all had tremendous consequences. Cold weather can snip the life of your plants. Too much water can drown the plants and their roots. Too much compost can heat up and start decomposing your plants.
If you want to learn about my other gardening failures, check out this blog post “10 More Gardening Mistakes to Learn From”
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