First time gardener's 5 inevitable mistakes
Most of us learn by mistakes. In fact, I'm not sure it's possible to learn any other way. So lets all remember that time that we:
1. Built a vegetable garden on the shady side of the house/fence/tree
Plants don't need a lot to grow, but most of 'em do need sunlight. So it's a sad revelation to learn that the sun travels on a fixed path and how that means that the "perfect" empty spot I picked out is one critical ingredient away from being perfect.
2. Put the compost bin in the far corner of the yard
I have compost to put in the compost bin, every day of the year. Making the distance between the kitchen and the compost bin, as long as it could possibly be, made this job unnecessarily hard. The flow on effects of this include: food decomposing in the kitchen (due to avoiding the harrowing trek to it's destination); and a neglected final product that looks less like something that a garden show host would want to rub all over their face, and more like a flat slimy empire of cockroaches. Now it's near the kitchen.
3. Planted running bamboo
Them: "Is it running or clumping bamboo?"
Me: "Clumping, I think."
Them: "Fewf!"
[ After 1 x year, 1mÂł x herbicide and 1 x excavator ]
Me: "Maybe running?"
4. Bought raised, corrugated iron vegetable garden beds from Aldi
Similarly to vegetable's fickle demands for sunlight, I have learned that vegetables also like the soil around their roots to be moist most of the time. Contrary to what the pictures on the box would have me believe- making the vegetable bed the highest point in the garden and putting the soil in contact with a thin piece of steel functioning as a solar powered hotplate- does not make for a naturally moisture regulated soil environment. All is not lost, a lifetime of irrigation engineering has post justified my impulse purchase.
5. Used weed matting to get rid of the weeds "once and for all"
One paragraph can't contain the breadth of this folly. Weed matting just sux.
