A significant survey was conducted some time back to check the most common mistakes of amateur gardeners. The area covered was part of the Midwest and much of the Northeast; the gardeners ranged from beginners to those with many years of experience.
Can you guess what was at the top of the poll in these — shall we call them — confessions? Lift your eyes from this page for a second and try.
It may or may not coincide with your garden history, but most people were guilty of overdoing it — attempting too much. Full of enthusiasm at the onset of Spring, in some cases, they spaded up more soil than they could adequately tend throughout the Summer.
In others, they were tempted to try this species or that variety for which they had not the necessary space. Were these mistakes in flower gardens or vegetable gardens? Both, but chiefly in vegetables.
Make A Plan
To avoid this, a sketch plan of the garden, no matter how rough, should be set down on paper and the flower space apportioned to give harmonious blends of color, continuity of bloom, and due regard for the respective heights and widths of the plants.
In the vegetable garden, the species to be grown should depend upon the family’s preferences, and the amount should not be so far beyond their capacity of appetite that it will be wasted.
With plants that are picked only once, such as cabbage, beets, corn, and carrots, a calculation as to the number required, and therefore the length of a row, is not difficult; with those that arc repeatedly picked, such as peas, beans, summer squash and leaf lettuce, the seed packet or catalog will advise as to the potential crop per foot of row.
It may not say, however, something which the survey indicated is often forgotten — sow your rows a little at a time, not all at once, to have a long picking season.
Weeding and Mulching
Next came the old, familiar bugbear of the garden: insufficient weeding, than which nothing can more effectively dampen enthusiasm, particularly in the hot dog days of Slimmer. Among some plants, in the rock garden, for example, there is no substitute for hand weeding; among others, a good thick mulch will save untold hours with the hoe or hand weeder.
All sorts of materials have been used for mulching, including aluminum foil and strawboard weighted down with stones lest they blow away in a high wind, but probably grass clippings and leaves are best of all. They are neat and discreet, they pack down, and they ultimately naturally feed the soil.
Observe, though, that there must be preliminary weeding before the mulch is laid down; it should be a light scuffling to destroy the infant weeds without disturbing the soil enough to bring up the deeper-buried seeds of others.
The Right Time to Pick
“Failed to keep plants picked” was a frequent sign of omission that brought its punishment of shorter season and lower yield, whether in flower or fruit. We defer the fulfillment of a plant’s annual cycle by judicious picking: left to itself, the plant will do no more than that cycle requires.
Akin to this error was one in the vegetable garden: not picking at optimum size. Almost all vegetables are sweeter and more tender when picked a little younger than one finds them in the stores, to which they have been supplied by commercial growers who must fill the bushel basket to make a profit. Carrots are a self-explanatory example.
“Did not thin sufficiently” was yielding to a weakness that besets every gardener at times. Even when down on the knees and well aware that the plants should be, say, ten inches apart, it somehow seems a sort of mild murder to pluck out all the intervening seedlings.
There is, of course, the other weakness, which is laziness, but thinning must be done so that the remaining plants may have a chance to do their best. As far as possible, their roots should not be disturbed when their neighbors are being removed.
More Mistakes
Runners-up in this post-mortem of errors included failure to test time soil and add plant nutrients. The converse also appeared “put on too much fertilizer and burned the plants.” The damage is caused not so much by burning as by dehydration when the fertilizer draws the moisture to itself.
Other comments were typical of the troubles shared by many: “Bought too much stuff and wasted a lot of time trying to use it all”; “Tried to grow in too much shade”; “Did not water enough”; “Had too much excavation clay around”— that means subsoil dug up for the foundations of a new house which is practically infertile;
“Got washed out” – perhaps the plot was not drained properly, an essential for culture; “Started too early”—which probably means that most of the seed was lost, and is almost as bad as starting too late.
44659 by Francis C. Coulter