How-to NOT grow vegetables in a vegetable garden.  Yep, that’s my experience.  It’s a sad fact that my garden tragedies are my biggest learning experiences.  I’m still working on all those great ideas, just ruling them out using all the bad ones.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how do all those WEEDS grow?

How do weeds thrive during drought conditions in your vegetable garden?  The truth, most often, is that you planted them there.  Really?  Yes.  One year, I was trying my hardest to grow my sweet little vegetable garden and using compost as a natural fertilizer.  Had I done more research, I would have known that grass clippings were a big no-no in compost piles because they contain weed seeds.  My poor, sweet, darling children helped me rake up our grass clippings for weeks and throw them on our compost pile before I spread it around the garden.  I have to laugh about this or I will cry, and please don’t tell the children.  Moral of the story:  don’t use grass clippings on your garden.

A Real Gardener Tests

Any real gardener can tell you that soil testing is vital to a good yield.  Well, I didn’t have access to a real gardener so I failed that test.  The soil I worked with had been compacted by years of horse training and riding and roping.  And with horses, comes manure.  That’s a great thing for your garden, or so I thought.  Actually, seasoned manure is a great thing.  Fresh manure is a killer – literally.  It can burn your plants from the root up and they’re long gone before you know what hits you.  In fact, my little plants were withered and burnt in less than two days time.  It was sad.  I had a little garden funeral for them all.  Moral of the story: don’t use fresh manure, instead test your soil to see what nutrients it may lack.

Whoa Nelly!  Scale that back Jack!

A seasoned gardener may be ready to expand his or her garden bed by a row or two.  You’ll almost never hear a second year gardener say, I just didn’t plant enough last year.  That’s because many novice gardeners make the same mistake I made and they try to plant everything their yard will hold all in that first year.  My first vegetable garden was a massive failure because of its sheer size.  If I had scaled it back, I probably would have been able to tend to it a little easier and not suffered so many problems and felt completely overwhelmed.  Moral of the story: start small so you don’t overwhelm yourself.