What mistakes have you NOT learnt from?

My personal annual mistake is to start things too early. Seeds are he worst, when the first sunny February days arrive I can't help it but start sowing.

It all starts respectably with early starters such as chillies and tomatoes, and anything which has "from Feb" on the pack. And then I get carried away and sow just a bit of this and that, imagining early start with lovely, bushy plants a month before their time... But as the ideal space for early seedlings is limited, some end up in random windowsills and become leggy and/ or die.

Year after year...

But honestly, who can resist the smell and feel of compost and the promise of spring in February?

The second "opportunity area" is thinning. My Grandmother had a strong view that if its green, it should be allowed to live. In her world this was applied selectively i.e. any trees and self- seeded flowers were in scope, weeds were not. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit the selective bit and find it very hard to thin out healthy seedlings I know perfectly well that my plants will become much better without competition, but the seedling I'm about to pluck out just looks at me with her vigorous baby plantlet eyes and pleads to survive... and here we are again, congested plants struggling for space.

After 30 years of gardening of some kind I should really know better. But hey ho, it's still a thrill when February is here an I have compost and seeds...

(btw- it's snowing hard at the moment)

 

I'm shocked how patient I have been with seed sowing this year. I don't like thinning out either, I don't over seed but if there's even just 2 that I need to get rid of, I try to save them.

Buying things on impulse and not checking what conditions it needs.

Also planting things too shallow/deep

 

Decided to put the greenhouse heater on last week
and plant lots and lots of seeds
It is really cold in the north at the moment but
the National grid is probably happy at the amount I am
spending

 

To always take a practice swing, before hitting the ball.

 

Twice in recent weeks I have misplaced my car keys. My usual routine on such occasions is to tear the house apart looking for them. Thankfully on these recent occasions I worked out early enough where they were likely to be . I was right. They were in the pocket of my gardening coat which currently lives in the shed. Doh! I did it twice

G.

 

I subscribe to the Homer Simpson theory on memory.

As we get older there is a limit to the capacity of information the brain can hold.

To learn something new, you have to forget something to make room for it. But what you forget will be a random memory.
So it can be something you did decades ago, or something just five minutes back.

 

I buy too many seeds in the autumn sales; far more than I could possibly have room for in the garden, never mind space to sow and grow on first. Every year I promise myself I'll be more conservative, and every year "just one more" <£1 packet will sneak into my basket to join its many, many friends.

 

@Selleri you and I 'ave to be related.... Im sooo ...Your post could soooo easily have been posted by me ...and @LinzAwww like you ... im always on a mercy mission to save seedlings too
and @2nd_bassoon OMG don't talk to me about packets of seeds, it has become sooo obsessive...Im thinking of seeing a therapist .... anyone got a phone number of one for me

 

Wearing decent clothes and shoes in the garden instead of bothering to change first ......esp trousers and shoes are always being ruined

 

I sometimes do that to. I'll Potter in my shoes I drive in. They are then caked in mud.

G.

 

Hi BeeHappy, I could certainly recommend one but he might turn out to be seedy

Talking about seeds, they are dangerous and can attack you unsuspectidly when you are innocently trying to feed your family. At the moment I have chillies and baby plum tomatoes growing, both variety "Whatever Tesco Groceries delivery man brings". We also have the ugliest, most hostile plant on Earth, aka Dragonfruit, which in fact is a cactus. An alarmingly vigorous cactus.

Not to mention the guacamole party we had 11 years ago. Here's the result:



My family is trying to help by firmly refusing to eat mangoes and papayas after several unsuccessful germination attempts. We have a cantaloupe melon whispering to me though...

 

Window shopping. I always end up spending money.

 

@Selleri
Toooo late Selleri ....Mind you ...I should have known better when i read his address

 

I mentioned this elsewhere.

If I had to get changed every time I decided on the spur of the moment to do something in the garden, I'd not bother.

So I've several sets of "scruff" that I wear around the house. So I can go straight out, do whatever I want to do, dressed as I am. Then come in, strip off the "scruff," stick it in the washing machine and put on clean "scruff."
I've neighbour with a similar hobbies and attitude. I've occasionally met him in the village DIY/hardwear shop, similarly dressed, when both of us have had to break off in the middle of a job to go and get something. Both our wives have a,"You're not going down to the village dressed like that are you?" attitude, but we don't care.