Monday, June 18, 2012

My failures so far

Every gardener loves to talk about their successes and what worked so well, but I believe we can also learn even more from our failures. And with gardening, sometimes our failures happen due to circumstances out of our control (weather, pests to name but a few).

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Ginger
This was my second time trying to grow ginger and again it was a total failure. I bought the bulb from B&Q and tried it on a hot windowsill - but absolutely nothing happened. May take some more advice from the link below before trying it again with some suitable store bought ginger - but if it fails again, I will just have to resign myself to buying it!
Growing ginger

Garlic
Approximately 50% failure on my garlic this year due to rust. I had some store bought garlic and this is still growing strong - but the old garlic that I used from last years bulbs that I grew myself all got heavily infected with rust. In future I will be buying new supplies of garlic for sowing each year. 


Pumpkin
This was my most annoying failure - all was going so well - it germinated well, grew quickly on a windowsill, adapted well to life outdoors after hardening off. And then came the storms last week - and the two pumpkins I had sown were snapped off near their bases. If I had known they were at risk, I would have covered them with a cloche ( I will be doing this next year for sure until they are too big for the cloche). The most annoying part was that it happened too late in the season for me to germinate more. I was so looking forward to having my own grown pumpkin soup for Christmas dinner starter as I had last year.

Potatoes
I forgot my potatoes that were in the pot when spraying for blight (thankfully remembered all the rest, and they are doing well) just before the last batch of wet weather and sure enough - they were covered in blight this weekend. I immediatedly emptied the pot - the potatoes were still usable, but tiny - still nice addition to the salad that evening for dinner. Blight will mean that the potatoes won't store. The leaves etc have been removed off site. Photos below.





Click on the images to see them in full size.  
These are just my failures so far - I am sure that by the end of the season that more will come along with a lot more success (hopefully!!).


"Expect the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes"

2 comments:

  1. I love your "take what comes" attitude. I'm working on that right now. I was so excited to see 6 baby quail running about our gardens, but then the next day there were only 2. I'm telling myself they are lost.

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  2. Thanks Carolyn - that works for my gardening - but like you I would find it a lot tougher if it was to do with animals - hopefully the baby quails had just found a nice place to rest and have re-appeared later on!! Fingers crossed!!

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