Do You Feel Like a Failing Gardener?

Summer is the time when gardeners like to brag about their gardens. Pictures are everywhere, on all social media sites, of gorgeous flowers, spacious and manicured backyards, fruit trees, lovely vegetables, perfect plants, and so on. It’s enough to be quite depressing.

If, like me, you sometimes feel like you are failing miserably at gardening, I’m here to remind you that most gardeners don’t share their failures! Every yard has some FAIL moments. And most importantly, we don’t all have the same advantages.

Problems With Peppers

As soon as I wrote a blog page about how happy I was with my pepper plants, they promptly began to die. No kidding. I pulled up my last Ancho poblano plant the other morning. One of the Nu Mex has also bit the dust, due to being stuck in a pot without correct drainage.

The two remaining green tomatoes on my last tomato plant refused to turn red, so I pulled that plant up too. Tomatoes don’t do well in Florida in summer. It was time to re-use the pot and get it ready to grow something else.

Let’s see, what else is currently failing in my garden? The Seminole pumpkin plants are doing almost nothing. Two of them have long vines, but not a single pumpkin. Are they growing too late into the season?

None of the watermelon plants look decent, and last year I ate three nice, delicious, watermelons!

Last Year…

What happened this time? I think I planted too late and then I was gone for 2 weeks. We’ve had a drought too.

I had counted on doing a better job of growing all these things in my second year of gardening. I pictured a stash of pumpkins to last me until next season, and enough watermelon to share with the neighbors. Instead, I have nothing to eat from the garden but basil, some onions, and a few small eggplant.

I kind of feel like a miserable failure. And looking at videos from other Florida gardeners is not helpful. Their crops are bountiful. Their plants look fabulous. Their gardens are organized, and producing, and the raised beds are filled with great compost.

I look at my failing crops and wonder how much more money I have to spend to get to the point where I have some good dirt for growing. But, I don’t garden to save money. I garden to have food from my yard.

Right now I have a lot of “cowpeas” in the ground. They are (mostly) growing nicely. This will supposedly help my soil by adding nitrogen.

If you feel like me, that your yard is working against you, try looking on the bright side. All that stuff that is not growing can help build the compost pile!

What is doing well in the yard? My flowers, specifically the Zinnias, are beautiful. My pineapple is growing. I see more butterflies, bees and hummingbirds than ever before.

When I get to see the little creatures that are enjoying the plants that came up from seeds I planted, I remember that I am on the right track.

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