Mastering Gardening Takes Time
By: Veggie Gardener Matt
Tags: Growth, Learning, Development, Gardening, Mental Health

If you’re active on Instagram and you follow my account, then you’d see that I have a passion for vegetable gardening (and gardening in general). From sharing bountiful harvests to providing tips for more successful crops, my domain is with nature.

While I aspire to one day be called a Master Gardener, I haven’t always had a green thumb. In fact, if you asked me 10 years ago to identify the physical differences between a Larkspur and Poached Egg seedling (yes, that’s an actual plant), then I would have looked at you clueless.

When I was young, I remember successfully growing my first plant in a pot on our deck. I didn’t know what it was, but it was growing and I was helping this new life to thrive. It eventually got to the point to where it outgrew its pot, so I showed my Mom since I was so proud. Turns out, I was actually growing a weed… but I didn’t care because it felt like an accomplishment to me. I was helping to support life where it once didn’t exist.

Fast forward to 2013 and I lived in a flat with no outdoor space. I knew that I wanted to grow food (due to its practicality), but I didn’t know a single thing about growing indoors. So, what did I do? I bought books, I researched online, I watched YouTube videos, and I even joined gardening forums. The gardening community is filled with a wealth of knowledge and, quite frankly, they’re a friendly bunch and this may be due to the fact that one scientific study has shown that gardening is good for your health. Needless to say, my journey was filled with trial and error and I took notes for the following year for what worked and didn’t work.

Arguably, any gardener would agree that these are the three most important tips to remember:

Take notes for next year Don’t be afraid of failing Don’t be hard on yourself

Small 2020 harvest from my backyard

Failing is actually key to succeeding in gardening. Over watered a plant? Flower got too little sun? Vegetable pods got attacked by pests? Perfect, then you’re on the road to mastering gardening because now you’ll (hopefully) be inclined to look online, ask a friend, or watch a video on how to resolve the issue.

Fast forward to present day and I’m sharing all of my knowledge and passion for growing on social media because this feels like my mission in life. Speaking from a truly geeky perspective, I’ve gotten to the point in growing to where I weigh and calculate my annual crop sizes, I pre-plan my vegetable beds so that I can maximise my space for potential catch crops, and I overspend on too many seeds for the next year. This will in-turn increase my gardening knowledge with each successive year. While this is a bold statement what I’m about to say, but when you get to this point in gardening (which you might), then you know that you’ve caught the ‘gardening bug’.

So give gardening a chance even if you’re not sure. If neither the health benefits weren’t enough to convince you nor my journey mentioned above, then consider starting your own journey. Everyone starts somewhere, so why put it off any longer? If you don’t think you have the space or the knowledge, then I can promise you that you do and you just didn’t know it.

Grow on, Gardeners ❤