I get asked time and again if am I enjoying the garden.
It has become life for me.
Pure and simple my garden is not only my job but my life.
It has been a huge life change, one that I am grateful for every day.
It’s also been a huge learning curve.
So, what lessons did I learn from my first year of gardening?
Stop Procrastinating and Start Doing
That was my first big lesson.
I spent three months watching gardening videos on YouTube before I finally formulated a plan and got started.
Like anything, new endeavours can be scary. What if I get it wrong? What if I can’t grow anything? What if, what if, what if …
Sound familiar?
Let’s be honest. There’s not much to stuff up.
Make a mistake? Move on. Try again.
Geez, we really need to get past our fear of making mistakes. Expect to make mistakes, plan to learn from them and keep going.
And don’t forget to know your “why”.
What the hell is a “why” you may ask?
Your “why” is your whole reason for doing something in the first place.
If you don’t have a strong “why” to motivate you, chances are you won’t keep going.
What was, and still is, my “why” for starting a garden? I have many!
First and foremost – growing my own food.
I have always loved the thought of growing my own food. I just never wanted to dedicate the time. I love the thought of food security; I love cooking and preserving food. I like knowing where my food comes from and if it’s organic.
There were many reasons for me to start a garden. I just needed to commit to one – a commitment to creating a garden, maintaining it, and commitment to learning and keep learning.
Let Go Of Expectations
This lesson should be for life in general right?
I talked about this before when I started travelling solo. But you know we humans can be a little slow in learning important life lessons, and I think this is one of them.
Let me give you an example – I wanted to grow beans.
I wanted to eat them, preserve them and freeze them. I like beans. I wanted to grow different varieties – ones for fresh eating, ones for drying and saving.
I wanted a few jars of pretty dried beans on the shelf to put into chilli con carne and nachos.
But Nooooo!
With the slugs, then the birds and all the rain and little sunshine guess what?
No bloody beans.
I was so disappointed with the beans. I felt like such a failure. I had expected a freezer full of beans. I even had recipes at the ready for when I picked them fresh.
Next season I will try to have no expectations. Next season I will raise seedlings and sow seeds according to my garden plan and then be happy with what I get.
Well, that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.
Stop Focusing on Failures and Celebrate Wins
There may have been no beans but I did however manage to grow awesome carrots!
And that brings me to the next lesson.
Move on from what went wrong and celebrate everything that went right.
And that was a lot.
Our freezer is full of vegetables and no more vegetable grocery bills – that was a huge win.
There are bouquets of flowers not only for my enjoyment but also for my 91-year-old mum, which was something I loved being able to give her. She absolutely loves flowers in her home.
I got exercise, sunshine and dirt under my nails. I was being healthy and building my immune system. Nothing like a little dirt to build a healthy immune system.
Rarely are things perfect. Except my carrots of course. They were pretty damn close.
If you expect perfect heads of cauliflower or huge leeks and whole leaves of kale (mine were full of holes), you will be disappointed.
I read somewhere that food with blemishes or signs of pest damage is a sign of an organic garden.
Change Your Attitude and Be Flexible
Most things I harvest from the garden are far from perfect.
But it’s food all the same and I found changing my attitude can turn a supposed failure into a huge win.
This past year I grew a lot of things at the wrong time, or with our crazy cold wet summer, things just didn’t grow the way they should have.
Like my onions, which I planted at the wrong time and they all went shooting to flower with the warmth of spring.
Instead of throwing them out (they won’t store once they start to flower) I harvested the lot and sliced all that was salvageable and threw them into the freezer. I am still using those onions in cooking.
The same happened with my garlic.
I planted tiny cloves, planted them in the wrong spot and blah, blah, blah. You get the point. They were not great. Out they came, they were finely sliced and diced and put into the freezer as well.
Not successes in the gardening world, but far from failures in my book.
Stuff the Rules
Well, to some degree.
There are some rules you need to generally follow. For example, tomatoes, capsicum, and eggplants are warmth-loving plants so will not grow in winter.
But there are many differing opinions and experiences out there. People tend to see their experience as the rule. But there are many things to consider – different gardening methods, growing zones, weird weather, different pests and more.
You can get bogged down in all the information, become overwhelmed and not know where to start.
After lots of reading and watching videos, I took the information that resonated with me and wrote a plan on how to start – what I needed to buy and what I needed to do to prepare.
But my biggest lessons came from just starting.
If it didn’t work, I researched the problem and found a solution. When it comes down to it, you will learn what works for you simply by doing it.
So just start. Then research the next step. Then the next. Take notes. Take risks. Try.
I started by making one garden. Then another. Each time learning what worked and what didn’t.
I found the no-dig method to be the best – it was easy and made the most sense to me from an environmental aspect.
The “rules” are good as a guide but your own experience will be much more valuable.
Document everything, that way you can avoid making the same mistakes and replicate your wins.
I also let myself be creative. No regimented straight lines for me. Meandering paths and bursts of colour in random places all the way!
Great Things Take Time, Don’t Give Up
Ugh! I have little patience.
But it’s a lesson – patience in the garden is rewarding in many ways.
Last year I planted purple sprouting broccoli. I pulled them out months and months later without producing one sprout. I thought I had done something wrong. I hadn’t. I didn’t realise it had such a long growing period before those delicious purple sprouts appeared.
I have planted more purple-sprouting broccoli. This time they are in their own bed where they can be left to take their time.
Then there is seed saving.
Many people said, “Save your own seeds”. However, they didn’t say that it takes a long, long time, sometimes years, to get seeds from your favourite plants.
Now I know seed saving takes a bloody long time!!! And I plant accordingly where I can leave one or two plants to go to seed at the end of a bed so I can replant in the middle.
Never Stop Learning
Learn everything you can, but when you need to know it.
It will be easier to retain the information as it is relevant to your current situation. Don’t forget to take notes.
It’s fine to increase your knowledge before starting.
But if you try and learn everything beforehand, you will never start. Too much overwhelm.
Remember, the old lesson – start before you are ready because you will never be ready. Start anyway.
Choose the plants you want to grow and start there. Find out the time they take to harvest (remember those purple sprouting broccoli), the right month to plant, and the spacing they need.
That was my other problem, overcrowding. I had plants shoved in all together and wondered why nothing thrived.
Lesson learnt.
Have a Contingency Plan
I love a good backup plan.
In my garden plan (a loose plan at best) I work out what plants I will grow in each bed.
Inevitably there is always space left, and I always seem to have seedlings left. So my beds end up with mixed plantings.
I don’t mind that. Last season I had a whole bed of broad beans affected by something (still not sure what it was), but I had a couple of smaller patches planted out also. They produced beautifully.
I am thankful I didn’t lose the lot.
I wasn’t as clever with my tomatoes which I planted together; got blight and had to be pulled out early. When my onions didn’t grow as expected, I had lots of leeks that did.
Plant a diverse garden.
Be Observant
I quickly realised to maintain a healthy, productive garden I needed to observe it. Daily.
I now understand that my past gardening efforts failed due to a lack of care and observation.
You can’t expect to plant a garden and go back on weekends and find it healthy. You might. If you’re lucky. I wasn’t.
By walking through the garden each morning, and most afternoons, I see any pest issues, if I need to water, any maintenance or pruning required, what’s thriving and what isn’t.
Daily observation means I can tackle any problems early before they become bigger issues. It has made all the difference in growing a productive garden.
Other Things I Quickly Learnt
Just because a seedling is available at Bunnings doesn’t mean it’s the right time to plant it or, in fact, easy to grow in my area.
These places tend to get their seedlings in early, way before it is time for them to go in the ground or they still have seedlings left long after they should have been planted.
Check before you go shopping. I like the Gardenate app. It has proven to be very useful.
It is also important to check the weather forecast for your area and see if there is a chance of frost before you plant frost-tender seedlings like tomatoes.
If you don’t check, you could waste a lot of money on seedlings that you plant out and subsequently die.
Good luck in the garden, but most importantly, have fun.
With love
Cindy x