HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY FAIL IN YOUR GARDEN

Failure and gardening go hand in hand. But failing in the garden isn’t always a failure. How do you successful fail in your garden? Is it possible that this moments of dread and despair are actually the very things that make you a better gardener? Read on to find out how you can successfully fail in your garden!

I used to dread failure. I was always the overachiever at school, the one who would hand homework in early and go out of their way to do the extra mile. Failure was something that would keep me up at night and, as an over thinker, still does. When I got my first allotment plot, I was instantly successful. Everything just grew.

In went the seeds, out popped a seedling and in time, a whole plant. My sunflowers grew tall and towered over neighbouring ones. My pumpkins grew over the archway, delicately dangling down like Christmas ornaments on a tree. My courgettes grew into marrows and produced more than I could eat! On I went, scattering seeds like confetti and laughing at how easy it had all beed.

What did I learn that year? Nothing. If I didn’t water for a week, it still grew. If I didn’t protect my broccoli, the slugs avoided them. I learned absolutely nothing about what it took to be an allotment gardener.

My second year looked completely different. This time, the slugs came in their thousands and absolutely destroyed my rows of carefully planted cabbages. The pumpkin plants didn’t get off the ground and courgettes wilted and died before their first crops appeared. My second year was a complete fail, and it was hard to take.

I blamed everything for my failure, everything except myself. It was the soil, the slugs, the pigeons, the weather… and while some of those things were true, ultimately I was to blame. I hadn’t learned anything about growing vegetables and had left my crops little chance of surviving. But I soon learnt.

I still make mistakes, everyone does that’s just life. The difference now is that I make sure to learn from them. Even without realising, the knowledge I acquire from my failures sinks in and is automatically rectified with my next attempt.

So how can you learn from your failure? How do you successfully fail at gardening?

1. Whack Stuff Out

That’s right. Get it out there. Stop overthinking everything and start whacking in some seeds and plug plants. These days there is so much information readily available to us on how to garden that it can almost be a hurdle in itself. You want to get it right first time, want to do everything the expert tells you. But until you actually have something growing, you wont learn a thing. Not really.

So whack it out and then figure out how to keep it alive!

2. Document Progress

Write it down, take photos, video things. Document your gardens progress. Gardens are fleeting, constantly evolving things and it’s so easy to completely forget how you did something come the next season. So document as you go and remind yourself of what went wrong and what went right.

3. Throw out the Rule Book

Someone somewhere has done it before you. Fact. But until you do it yourself, you wont truly learn the way they did. See yourself as a gardening pioneer every time you step into your garden. When you sow seeds, tell yourself you are the first person who has ever planted them.

With this mindset you are far more likely to respond to your actual plant rather than referring back to some other expert. Figure out what your plant needs by yourself. Get to know your plants, try to understand them. It will make you a better gardener and you’ll no longer need to lean on others knowledge at every turn.

4. Start Over

Don’t see the failure of a crop as the end. Just start over. Throw in another seed or plant and try it again. If we quit when something fails, it becomes the end. But if we choose to keep going, it becomes the beginning of our journey to do better.

Remember that Stuff Wants to Grow

Believe it or not, plants have survived for years and years before any human ever called himself a gardener. Plants know exactly what they are doing, with or without our help. Even when you make mistakes, you will see signs of your plant desperately clinging on to survive. Plants don’t want to die, the want to live! You’re there to help them to do that and make sure they grow big and strong, not to literally keep them alive! Do what you can for them and listen to them when they tell you they are struggling. (Yes, I do talk to my plants!)

With these things in mind, you’ll be able to turn your gardening failures into successes. You can’t really fail in gardening, because each day is new. Each season brings with it new challenges, new life and new hurdles. Your garden is constantly evolving and changing and adapting and when you start to look at it like that, you’ll realise that failure is just non existent.

After all, you could just grow weeds! Weeds always survive in my garden!