Another big lesson I have learned is one of patience. I never rush now to commit what I think is a corpse to the compost heap. Wait. I give the plant 3 times longer than I think it needs to recover and show signs of life, very often a tiny shoot will appear and grow, eventually.
Something I am trying to learn too. Last summer I planted a supposedly drought tolerant Cotinus Coggria Royal Purple which wilted and ‘died’ so it duly went on the heap. It was very hot. I planted it in summer. I wish I had waited. I was in the garden centre where I bought it recently and saw they had pruned back last years stock of the same plant and they were thriving. I bought another...
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
1st. Planting 3 rose bushes (thinking they were the small variety) in close proximity of each other, to find they grow a trillion times larger then it said on the label (bought from Aldi) and although they are stunning they just look plain daft.
2nd. Taking advice from an assistant at a garden centre when asked to create a border of wild flowers, perennials, and bulbs I had hoped it would of been a beautiful cottage border, but in fact was sold the most self seeding plants I have ever bought for it to seed all over my garden in my veg boxes in the childrens barked play area and in the cracks of my patio.
3rd. To always assume that the plants get to the size as it says on the instructions label to find every year they get ridiculously mahoosive!
@flowerbynameflowerbynature You must have some good soil.. can't blame your plant fertility on plant labels or teenage GC workers.
My soil quality was poor when I moved in and I couldn't grow a thing especially as some parts I have some very heavy clay, large rocks and I even unearthed an entire greenhouse buried under a lawn. I kept digging over and adding chicken chicken pellets and fresh chicken poo from my lovely chickens who were sadley taken by Mr fox.
Now I have great soil, (very happy about this) I'm now assume that they will get bigger than I think and leave plenty of growing space.
Learn your leaves. I am hopeless with labelling, or when weeding etc., spotting a couple of leaves which seem to be weeds. I also have a habit of sowing rows of veg. confident that I will remember which row is which. Not. However, I can now mostly recognize the baby leaves and identify which plant is where. I have found a number of "visitors" growing in my garden which I have allowed to grow on because of the leaves. The most recent being some wild orchids, growing in containers. Where they have come from I have no idea but they are very welcome.
Not to go to the Allotment with an impossibly long list of jobs & then berate myself for hardly doing half of them, because I get distracted with something else that wasn't even on the list in the first place!
A long list of jobs does somehow sap the joy out of gardening. I now prefer potter randomly if I can. I usually get more done in the end. For me, gardening is either a joy or a chore. Like any other creative endeavour, I try and stay on the joyous edge.
I'm going to have to add sowing carrots under fleece to this list. I'm sure I read somewhere that growing under fleece would stop the carrot flies, but all I've done is created the perfect microclimate for every weed in the area. There's a star trek episode where they come across a completely dead planet except for one little oblong of green, that turns out to be an alien's garden. That's what my allotment now looks like if I take the fleece away. I know all the business about height being the way around carrot fly, but given the price of carrots in the shops I just don't think they're worth the trouble (which I think is Bob Flowerdew's view also).
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
Growing vegetables you actually don’t like to eat is another one, stopped doing that years ago, fortunately. In addition to liking to eat them, they have to be significantly better tasting than shop ones (toms, broad beans, freshly dug new potatoes) and/or significantly cheaper to grow your own like cut and come again salad leaves and baby spinach. For me, bog standard carrots, onions and main crop potatoes are a waste of precious water and growing space, plus cheaper to buy anyway if you factor in your labour.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
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2nd. Taking advice from an assistant at a garden centre when asked to create a border of wild flowers, perennials, and bulbs I had hoped it would of been a beautiful cottage border, but in fact was sold the most self seeding plants I have ever bought for it to seed all over my garden in my veg boxes in the childrens barked play area and in the cracks of my patio.
3rd. To always assume that the plants get to the size as it says on the instructions label to find every year they get ridiculously mahoosive!
I' sure I will make as many mistakes this year!
Another lesson I am still still learning.
Learn your leaves. I am hopeless with labelling, or when weeding etc., spotting a couple of leaves which seem to be weeds. I also have a habit of sowing rows of veg. confident that I will remember which row is which. Not. However, I can now mostly recognize the baby leaves and identify which plant is where. I have found a number of "visitors" growing in my garden which I have allowed to grow on because of the leaves. The most recent being some wild orchids, growing in containers. Where they have come from I have no idea but they are very welcome.