When I started my outdoor garden, I was so excited and optimistic. I could just picture all of the healthy, vibrant salad greens and shiny tomatoes I would grow. I went to the local supermarket, 168, and bought Nantes carrot, spinach, lettuce, bokchoy, tomato, and Asian chive seeds. Everything was going great - a lot of the seeds had sprouted and the seedlings were eagerly growing upward.
It wasn't until the bokchoy seedlings grew a little bigger (about 1 inch tall) that things started to go wrong - horribly wrong. Within a week, the an entire shoebox of bokchoy seedlings had withered up and died. The worst part was that I had no idea why.
I felt discouraged and didn't have the same optimism for gardening anymore. It wasn't that I was frustrated or didn't want to try again; the plants had been all I had focused on for two weeks, and when they died it felt like the death of a goldfish. I felt unqualified and worried that my lack of experience and knowledge would continue to kill the rest of the seedlings.
I promised myself that I would find the reason why all of the bokchoy died in order to prevent the same thing from happening to the other plants. I realized that the bokchoy were planted in a shallow, cardboard shoebox, while the healthy lettuce seedlings had been planted in a deep, plastic Milano cookie box. I found that the shallow layer of dirt and the cardboard allowed water to evaporate especially fast, and that the bokchoy were drying out. On the other end, more soil can hold more water, and plastic containers don't let water escape from the bottom/sides.
From this experienced, I learned that if you want to garden or start any other hobby, you're going to experience obstacles as you ride through that learning curve. As long as you try your best to find a way around it, you should be so proud of yourself for not giving up when things get tough and having the drive to find the mistakes.
I read something online that went along the lines of "all gardeners kill plants" and I think if I had read an experienced gardener's blog with that message sooner, I would never have felt discouraged or unqualified to keep planting. I wanted to share this message with all of you so you don't make the same mistakes I did.
You can find out more about my outdoor gardening experience here.
You can do it, and we'll be learning with you. Email us if you have any questions or suggestions at troyyouthef@gmail.com! We're excited to hear from you.