Gardening is one of the top prepper skills needed for survival. Learning how to grow your own food is not something you want to do after a disaster has happened. I can speak from experience when I say there is a lot to learn and you will make a lot of gardening mistakes. Better to make them now when your world is pretty stable than when you're just trying to survive day by day following a worst case scenario.
If you count my first year (which I often don't), this will be my fourth year gardening. In those three years of growing and trying to grow food, I have made a lot of mistakes. I am very glad for each and every one of those mistakes, because otherwise, I would not have found out what I didn't yet know. Let me share those mistakes with you and maybe you can avoid them!
Year 1 Gardening Mistakes
Where to begin?
- I planted too much.
- The bed was too big.
- I started all the seeds on the same day.
- There wasn't enough water.
My first try at gardening was in a fairly large raised garden bed in the corner of our backyard. I planted pumpkins, tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, strawberry plants, peas and some herbs – all by sowing seeds at the same time.
Now I know that each part of the country has a planting zone and there are many charts to tell you when to plant, what to plant, and what to start indoors. As things started growing, I soon realized that the pumpkin vines were going to wind their way through everything. I also couldn't tell the plants from the weeds. There was so much in the garden that I had to wade through the garden to get to the plants in the middle!
I still had hope even after I realized the garden was a bit crowded – and then a drought hit the area. We tried watering for a few weeks, but our water bill was outrageous. We let the garden go and besides a few strawberries, we got nothing from the garden but lessons to take with us into Year 2.
Year 2 Gardening Mistakes
Again, my mistakes were many:
- Some seeds were planted late.
- I planted too much, again.
- I didn't check for predators every day.
- I wasn't prepared to succeed.
The next time we tried gardening, we had moved to a different state. My husband built four 8-foot by 4-foot beds and we filled them with dirt. I researched everything we wanted to plant to see when and how we should plant them. I created a timeline so I could check off what we needed to do.
So far, so good.
However, we barely got the seeds in the mail in time to start the tomato seeds inside, which meant the pepper seeds started inside were about a month late. (We did not get a lot of peppers that year.) I had a lot to do and check on during that spring and summer for a first-time gardener (I still don't count that first year.) I still had young children to tend to, activities to get us to, and vacations to take. Each plant had something different to teach me, but I didn't have time to learn from all of them.
We didn't find the hornworms until they had devoured several tomato plants. The Japanese beetles attacked the pumpkin plants severely. We beat them back once we found them with Neem oil, but the damage had been done. We should have checked the plants every day, but we didn't.
Overall, the garden was a success that year, despite my mistakes. That, in itself, led to another mistake – I wasn't prepared for success. I knew we'd learn a lot, but I didn't realize we just might grow a lot. I didn't have the recipes or equipment on hand to harvest and use everything we grew. I ended up giving a lot away to friends. It was stressful trying to not waste what we grew. I stocked up on mason jars and cookbooks that next winter!
Year 3 Gardening Mistakes
By this time, I had learned a lot, but made new mistakes. This time:
- There was too much water.
- I didn't weed enough.
- We didn't know about cross-pollination.
- I didn't save some seeds correctly.
- I wasn't prepared to fail.
Too much of a good thing can be bad. The first year, we didn't have enough water. This year, we had too much and our tomatoes suffered. Turns out a little bit of mulch would have saved them, but I didn't know that at the time. The overabundance of water also affected our squash, zucchini, pumpkin and melon plants. Powdery mildew would have been nipped in the bud if we had caught it early, but we went on vacation and it was in full force when we came back. The weeds had also overtaken parts of the garden in the week we were gone. I didn't mark the location of plants well. (This year, I just might hire a garden sitter in addition to a dog sitter when we leave!)
I knew nothing about pollination. Have you learned about pollination? You should, if you're going to plant a garden. Some plants are self-pollinators and can go anywhere in the garden. However, others need help from insects and bees to pollinate and produce fruit. If you put two of those plants next to each other, the insects and bees will cross-pollinate them, and you can end up with a squash that looks like a zucchini or a melon that looks like a pumpkin. Honestly! We opened up what looked like a pumpkin and it had a melon smell and taste. We won't make that mistake again.
We had to buy some pepper plants because when I saved the green pepper seeds from the previous year's garden, I apparently saved them from immature peppers because hardly any of the seeds I started indoors sprouted. Save seeds from fully mature plants if you want the seeds to germinate.
I was all set for a great harvest in year three with all my canning gear and recipes. I planned for a fully stocked pantry of tomato sauce and salsa. I forgot to think about what we would do if we didn't have a big harvest – and we didn't. The only things that flourished that year were onions and jalapenos. I canned plenty of jalapenos, but our salsas and tomato sauces only lasted a few months. .
Year 4 Gardening Mistakes
This growing season has just started and already I've made one mistake: I started seeds too early.
I don't have anything in the ground yet, but I planted our tomato seeds too early indoors. This should easily be remedied by getting some bigger pots as planting time gets closer, but I found out tomato plants like to shoot out long roots and I hope I don't stunt their growth. I wish I had found that out before I tried getting a jump-start on nature. I'll be buying pepper plants again this year as I must have harvested seeds from some more immature green pepper plants that really looked mature.
Mistakes are how I'm learning and I expect to make many, many more. Make sure to find some experts to help you along in your gardening journey. I highly recommend Melissa K. Norris, who has a blog, podcasts and a book full of gardening tips and know-how. Also, check out the other gardening articles on The Survival Mom website at her gardening page.
