Gardening always sounded like a relaxing way to spend time. Before they moved, I had a neighbor that would spend hours a day in her yard with a little trowel, some gloves, and a tiny bench. Even on the hotest days she’d still be out there picking at weeds faithfully.

I talked to her a few times and she mentioned how she must look crazy spending so much time in the yard gardening. To be honest, she was right. We watched her (equally crazy) do that for years and meanwhile I was happy I’d been able to keep a simple house plant alive for over 2 years. Shortly after they moved, I decided to make the move to an outdoor garden and it was eye-opening.

It will keep you physically active

I thought digging up 4-8 flower beds would be light work since I work out all the time. That was a bad assumption and I ended up only clearing out two. Even though I’d waited for the soil to dry out, but not too much, it was still super packed. Digging holes is hard.

So is moving dirt around in a wheelbarrow. So is picking up that dirt when it falls out of the wheelbarrow because you filled it too high. They also have tires that can go flat.

Sitting low to the ground isn’t as easy as I thought either. I went out there with a 5 gallon bucket to sit on and I learned that a bucket is not that comfortable. The little bench my old neighbor had made more and more sense for every 5 minutes I sat on that bucket.

Plus there’s the general movement of walking around, digging smaller holes, moving plants and containers around, and getting supplies you forgot about. Over the course of a few hours, it adds up which leads to the next thing I learned.

Planning is important

Last year was the first time I did an outdoor garden and I was excited. I took a gardening class with the Master Gardeners and sketched out my vision. I picked plants based on the amount of sun and water they need so that ended up being three varieties of peppers, a couple of sugar baby watermelons, and about a dozen different flowers and foliage.

Keep in mind that I only prepped 2 garden beds, so if you’ve done a garden before you can probably see where this is headed. I totally ignored the spacing instructions for all of the plants and packed in 6 pepper plants next to 1 sugar baby watermelon plant…

It looked fine until they all started growing and ran out of space. I got more peppers than I knew what to do with and none of the sugar baby melons were sweet, even though that plant produced over a dozen of them. I didn’t even get to plant the flowers because I also started late in the season.

I learned a lot from that, so this year I had a much better plan with much fewer plants. I went with two okra plants, two cucumber plants, and half a dozen perennial flowers. I paid attention to the spacing, water, and sun requirements and dug up the right number of beds.

For the flowers, I even waited for a specifically rainy day so I wouldn’t have to water them. I was proud of those flowers because I saw them start growing and blooming! But then the grass also started growing. I didn’t mulch the flower beds before I planted so they all ended up getting mowed down with the rest of the grass.

That was bad planning, but hopefully since they’re perennials they’ll grow back up and I can put mulch in that bed. Or I’ll just try again next year.

It’s ok if the plants die

Not all of them will make it every year. Last year, even with the overcrowding, all of my plants survived and grew a lot of produce. This year, with just four plants, two of them died shortly after I transplanted them to the ground.

You never really know what’s going to happen and that keeps it interesting. You can do your best and give the plants everything they need to grow, then a family of rabbits comes and eats them. Sometimes stuff happens and you have to start planning for the next season with the lessons from this one.

I’m sad about those flowers I didn’t plan for properly because I spent the time and care to plant them. But I have to let it go and think about what I can do better. Just like the sugar baby melons that weren’t sweet, I figured out I was over-watering them so it diluted the sugars.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your first house plant or your first time with any growing experience. There will be some plants that die along the way and it’s ok. Try it again.