🌱 Day 16 of my 30-day post challenge 🌱 Today will be a simple post! Here are 👶 10 beginner gardening mistakes 👶 I've made in the past. This post was inspired by this reel: https://lnkd.in/gN6Y_N83 💡 Not My Brightest Moment - I once chose an apartment with a North-facing balcony for growing plants because in art school I was told that North light was the best light. As it turns out, diffuse light is great for artists, but the opposite is true for plants! They prefer direct Southern light! 🤦♀️ 🌿 Weeds Shmeeds - The first time I had a community garden plot, I didn't weed it. I thought that keeping it "natural" would keep my crops healthier. Well... they quickly became the dominant crop I grew there, and the garden managers weren't a big fan of that either. 🙊 🙃 "I'll Just Toss Them In There" - I've made the mistake of buying a nursery plant and then just haphazardly planting it straight into a patch of clay soil, on a hot summer day in July, with a little bit of water and no mulch, thinking "eh, it'll be fine" more times than I'm willing to admit. 😅 🐣 Rotten Egg Cartons - If you see a video online of someone starting seeds in a cardboard egg carton, don't bother. The wells are way too shallow for most seed starts, and the roots can't easily penetrate the thick cardboard. It's also bad for moisture regulation. You'll just have a sloppy, moldy mess. 😑 🤔 "I'll Just Move Them" - Yeah... I used to plan my garden layout very poorly and resorted to moving established annual seedlings around, killing them in the process. Now if an annual plant is in the way of something else, I just pull it out and cut my losses. 🤼 The More, The Better - This one is very common, but planting things waaay to close to each other isn't the way to go. This year I might finally learn my lesson! 🤢 Uncooked Compost - Trust me, composting in place isn't you dumping a bin of food scraps into a plant bed you're establishing. Animals found the scraps and dug them out, disrupting the plants. There were also a lot of citrus peels and avocado rinds in there that didn't decompose. ⌚ Too Soon - Last year, I started my tomatoes in January. They grew faster than I could transplant them, and sadly they grew terribly in the garden. Make sure you know your planting timeline, folks. 🏔 Mounds - I thought my plants would grow better if I mounded the soil, but covering those mounds with straw didn't stop the Kansas winds from blowing all the soil away, exposing all the plant roots underneath. They dried faster too, which didn't help, and I also couldn't plant as much into them. 📏 Too Far Away - The only way I got my indoor seedlings not to be leggy was to keep my shop lights 2-3 inches above the leaves at all times. All other times, terrible results. Well I hope this is helpful! Let me know what gardening mistakes you've made! #gardentips #gardening #gardenmaintenance
