20 Common Mistakes Gardeners Make & How to Avoid Them Donna Larson, June 3, 2024June 1, 2024 Whether you’re new to gardening or a veteran at it, you’re sure to have something go wrong in the garden. Let’s look at the top 20 common mistakes gardeners make and how you can avoid them. Mistakes Gardeners Make These mistakes gardeners make can be divided between two main causes: inexperience and unrealistic expectations. A lack of experience is surely a good reason to make mistakes. Hopefully, we learn from our experiences as we go so that we can do better. Unrealistic expectations is something that happens with the newbie, but also with the gardener who erroneously believes she can do it all. It looks good on paper, but then life strikes in the height of the rainy season. Weeds take over, harvests rot, and she feels defeated. Whatever the reason, let’s look at these common mistakes, so we can help you avoid making them in the first place. 1. Setting Unrealistic Goals Here is one of the biggest mistakes gardeners make when they first get started. Literally, the “biggest.” If you’re new to gardening, please start small. Do not till up an acre of your new homestead in hopes to grow all of your own food. You are setting yourself up for an overwhelming defeat. Instead, pick a handful of things that you’d like to learn how to grow. Research those few plants, and start a limited amount of each. I recommend a cherry tomato, green beans, and sweet potatoes. Each of these are warm weather crops, and they’re on the easier side to grow with few problems. Understand that there will be issues to learn about along the way, like disease, or soil fertility. Learn all about how to deal with the problems, when to harvest, how to preserve, and how to prepare your fruitful harvest. Once you’ve mastered your select few varieties, add something new next season. Alternatively, you could stay with the same few vegetables, but grow more of them if you really liked them. Or, if you didn’t like growing these, skip them next season and try something else. Whatever you do, set yourself up with attainable goals in the garden. Success will spur you on in the future to keep you returning to your garden. 2. Not Planning Ahead Keeping your calendar handy is a good idea when planning through your growing season. Writing out when to plant, when to succession sow, and when to expect a harvest are the minimum to plan for. Don’t forget to consider your real life happenings during your garden seasons. My accountant friend finds planting season difficult because she works 12-14 hour days at that time. She enlists help from her friends and family when she has the rare opportunity. The bulk of the labor gets done all at once instead of a little every day. Do what works for you. If you can’t manage to work for eight hours in the garden on the weekend, then aim for a little each day. I promise, there is no right way to get your garden time in as long as you do it. 3. Misunderstanding the Growing Season Like planning ahead, understanding your growing season is equally important. You need the answers to these critical questions: When is your last frost date in Spring? When is your first frost date in Fall? How many frost free days do you expect? What naturally grows well in your area? If you are in the far north with only 100 frost free days, you may not be able to grow sweet potatoes, some peppers, or okra. Alternatively, if you live in the subtropics of South Florida, you will not be able to grow tomatoes in July. It’s just too hot and humid, but you can grow jack fruit and bananas, saving your tomatoes for the late Fall/Winter season. Befriend a gardener in your area to better guide you as you learn. Better yet, join a gardening group or club to glean knowledge from. 4. Skipping Seasons The more you grow, the better you’ll grow. Don’t forget that you can grow something somehow anytime. For us, in North Florida, we are always growing something. New gardeners here tend to skip the winter season, but that’s our best season to grow brassicas such as cabbage and cauliflower. When you ignore the vegetable garden for an entire season, you lose your momentum. Keep learning, season after season, and enjoy the time for what it is. 5. Improper Spacing Check the seed packets for the plants that you intend to grow for spacing guidelines. Planting too close together will cause plants to compete for resources, and none of them will grow well. Planting too far apart leaves a lot of bare soil, which can be disastrous to your soil health. Be especially careful if you’re following the Square Foot Gardening Method. I used a seeding square to plant my green beans this Spring. Both the square and the square foot rules recommend 9 bean plants per square foot. That means planting 4″ apart. When I saw them laid out in the bed, I thought that was too close. I was right. My green bean crop was a bismal. In the future, I’ll go back to planting my beans at 6″ apart. This scenario was one of those unnecessary mistakes gardeners make, but learning is part of the process, even when experimenting. A long row row of marigolds (Tagetes) are planted alongside a raisd bed of tomato plants in a vegetable garden. The tomato plants are staked and tied to wire cages. The marigolds are used as companion planting and are thought to deter harmful insects. 4. Missing Companions Monocropping is planting all of the same plant in any given area, one of those mistakes gardeners make at some point. You won’t find a monocrop field of cucumbers in nature. Planting this way is the best way to bring on disease and pests and deplete your soil. Companion Planting brings a variety in the uptake of nutrients as well as confusion to pests. Some companions, such as tobacco, actually help to deter pests from those crops nearby. I like to plant tobacco as companion plants throughout my garden for this reason. The pollinators like the flowers too. 5. Planting for the Tiniest Harvest I’m going to take you back to green beans for a moment. One of the most common mistakes gardeners make all the time is to plant too few of something. If you plant a bean plant, that’s great. You’ll learn how the bean grows, flowers, and fruits. You’ll even get a harvest of a dozen beans at most. What on earth will you do with a handful of green beans? That’s barely enough to snack on while working in said garden. Instead, plant several of those bean plants. Learn from the experience, and see how many you get. How many meals did you get out of that harvest? How often does your family eat green beans in the month? The year? Now, figure out how many you need to plant to make gardening worth your time. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Do this with the other plants that you’d like to try growing in your home garden. 6. Missing the Harvest I am completely guilty of this one, and it feels awful. Missing the harvest is such a big mistake because you’ve done all of the hard work, and you’re missing the reward. The prize at the end of the season rots on the vine because life got in the way. Make sure that you plan a quick walk through the garden at least every other day when you’re plants are beginning to mature. Gathering the harvest must be the priority. The harvest is the biggest thing that keeps me going year after year. 7. Not Succession Planting “One and done” is no way to be when you have a long growing season. Succession planting is often left out by first-time gardeners. They just plant, grow, and hopefully harvest. Instead, try to plant another round of the same plant a week or two later. Summer squash is so fast growing, but it’s prone to bugs and fungal diseases. I love to sow them in succession from early spring until Summer so that I can keep getting fruit. When the first round dies back, I can continue to harvest from the next round. And so on. 8. Planting Invasive Plants Whatever you do, don’t plant mint or lemon balm in your garden. Give these running plants their own space outside of your garden. Better yet, give them a container. You’ll never get them out their original planting spot. 9. Poor Records I’ve had years of excellent record keeping, and years of the exact opposite. The years that I’ve tracked varieties of seeds planted on which dates have been my best years of gardening. I will never remember everything. Honestly, I will rarely remember anything. Looking back at my records gives me an idea of what worked. After years of gardening experience, you’ll just know what to do, but you’ll still forget about the new plants. Keeping track on paper or digitally helps beginner gardeners and the most experienced gardeners alike grow better gardens. 10. Wrong Location One of the most common gardening mistakes is to set up garden beds in the wrong place. If you want to keep a healthy garden, make sure to put it in a place that you’ll spend time in. Further, make sure that your garden gets full sun during your growing season for maximum plant growth. Planting near established trees will shade out your plants, and it can allow the robbing of nutrients from the garden. Last, consider where each type of crop will be planted. Planting your okra in a place that shades out peppers, with a smaller plant height, might not be the best plan. Instead, put the taller plants on the north side of the garden, so that the shorter plants still get full sun exposure. 11. Using Too Much Chemical Fertilizers This may not seem like a big deal, but hear me out. Chemical fertilizers are petroleum based and kill soil life. Overusing them can bring too much salt to your garden, contributing to poor soil, and killing back your plants. I’m not here to argue for organic gardening only, even though that’s my preferred method. I’m gardening in Florida sand, which takes a ton of organic matter to grow anything decent. That can be difficult to accumulate. As I recently heard from our friend David the Good, “are we really worried about how a little 10-10-10 is going to affect our sugar sand?” No, we are not. So I’ll end this with make sure that you aren’t using “too much” of those fertilizers, and maybe learn how to use more organic options along the way. Too much fertilizer of any kind will burn your plants. 12. Failing to Identify the Problem Sometimes on the homestead, we notice a potential problem, and sit back to see if it works itself out. In the garden, that might work, or doing nothing could be one of the biggest mistakes gardeners make. A horn worm will decimate a tomato plant overnight. A fungal disease will take out a squash crop or green beans in just a couple of days. Watching persistent herbicide damage happen while continuing to plant in the poisoned soil is a huge problem. When something goes wrong in the garden, figure it out as quickly as possible. Not only could you save this year’s crop, but you’ll learn how to better grow next season. 13. Improper Timing When Applying Pesticides Never ever spray pesticides on your plants during sun exposure. Many of them contain oils that will burn your plants under the sun. Furthermore, you don’t want to spray when your beneficial pollinators are out helping your garden. Always apply any pesticides in the evening, and then don’t be afraid to wash your plants the following morning. Choose organic pesticide options if possible. 14. Not Building the Soil You’ve probably heard that soil is living, and gardening is all about the soil, etc. I’m going to give you a different take on soil building. Think of your soil like your bank account. If you tend it well, it will pay you back with dividends. If you’re always taking, you’ll be left with nothing. You have to continue to make deposits to earn any interest. Your soil needs constant additions if your plants are always taking nutrients. Adding fresh compost or other organic matter with each growing season is a great way to build soil in your veggie garden. wheel barrow and shovel working with landscape mulch 15. Skipping Mulch Mulch is an absolute necessity in my opinion. I’ve tried just mulching with compost, but it dries out too quickly. My favorite mulch is anything you can easily find. Right now, I’m using a push lawnmower with a collection bag to mow dead oak leaves. they get chopped up nicely, and I can easily pour them out on garden beds. Use what you’ve got, that’s the homesteader way, right? Using mulch not only keeps your soil moist, which keeps your plant roots cooler, it also suppresses weeds. Thick layers of mulch can even keep grass out of the garden. Sheet mulching works for small spaces, but it can be costly for large gardens unless you source it for free from your local tree trimmers. 16. Improper Watering Too much water can be just as bad as not enough water in your garden. Proper soil moisture is of utmost importance. Do you remember that part about building soil? When we build soil, we’re attempting to cultivate the life of the soil. All life needs water, but it doesn’t want to be drowned. The best time to water is in the evening, so that your plants can take up water overnight. If you’re watering overhead so that your plants get wet, then switch to watering in the early mornings so that your plants aren’t so prone to fungal diseases. If you’re able to water the soil, instead of the plants, such as with drip irrigation, you’ll have better results. How do you know if your garden is getting the right amount of water? Stick your finger in the soil. It’s really that simple. 17. Analysis Paralysis So often, we hear that people want to start their first garden, but they’re so afraid to do something wrong. The easiest way to learn is to just do it. Plant something, even if it’s wrong. You’ll learn along the way. If you don’t plant anything at all, and just keep making all the plans without execution, well you’re sure to grow nothing. Stop dreaming, and start doing. 18. Not Expecting Loss Just know that whatever you do, even if you’re the best gardener the world has ever seen, you’re going to have loss. Whether it be from unexpected climate conditions, or varmints, or just a busy life, plants will die. That’s okay. Plant a little extra for the bugs and the birds. 19. Forgetting to Fail Forward Don’t forget that the most important thing that you can do when something fails is to learn from the experience. Research what happened and try again differently. Maybe it was the variety, the season, the watering or nutrition you gave it. Maybe the plant was eaten by an unknown pest or you didn’t harden them off. Whatever happened, use the situation to become a better gardener, and then move forward. Eventually, you’ll get the hang of it, and you’ll be the one teaching your novice gardener friends. 20. Misunderstanding the Process Most of us think that the end goal of the garden is to harvest the fruit. Am I right? Isn’t that why you wanted a garden? The fruit is really just icing on the proverbial cake though. The real prize is in the journey. The gardener learns so much about herself in the process. She learns to appreciate the dirty fingernails or the itchy arms after weeding between green bean plants. The gardener takes delight in seeing life in the garden, in using the space as a respite from a chaotic world, and in spying a volunteer plant in an inconspicuous corner. So don’t forget to enjoy the process that is gardening because after all, we aren’t “harvesters.” We’re gardeners, meant to enjoy the work that is hard but good. Conclusion on Mistakes Gardeners Make Which of these mistakes gardeners make have you been guilty of? I want you to know that this post comes from a place of experience, as I’ve made each and every one of these mistakes. Sometimes I still do, and if I’m being honest, there’s a heck of lot more mistakes gardeners make. I could probably be the poster child for them too. However, I want to give you hope. Even though I routinely make some of the same mistakes, I still grow a lot of food each season. My wish is for you to learn from my mistakes though, and maybe save you some time and energy in your garden. Now go plant something. Happy Gardening! Donna @ Hazel Belle Farm Donna and her family have been homesteading for most of their 20+ years together in some shape or fashion. She currently lives on their 20 acre farm where they grow as much food as possible. What started as a just a few laying hens, has grown into large gardens, pastured poultry, pork, and lamb. They are continuously evolving their small farm to not suit their family’s needs, but also providing to their local community. Donna’s favorite part of the family farm is her self-built micro-dairy, where she gets to love on dairy cows while serving her local community. Milking, cheesemaking, and processing dairy have become the soul of their homestead and the center of their farm. Gardening Homesteading