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Yeah, so remember the Earth Day sapling I brought home? You know, the one that I got for free from the grocery store. The one with the lovely care instructions on the bag that I chose to ignore. Oh yeah, that one? What happened to that tree?
Complete and utter failure happened.
Look at all that brown! But this outcome was predictable, right? I completely disregarded the instructions and went for glory right away. There, of course, is a lesson to be learned here. Several, in fact.
Lesson 1: Be patient.
It’s easy as newb gardeners to want to put something, anything, into the ground without knowing too much about its care. Gardening isn’t a race. They who plant the fastest doesn’t grow the best. In fact, if you take the proper time and care, you can usually produce amazing results no matter your skill level. So take your time! Learn about your plants. Gardening isn’t going anywhere.
Lesson 2: Listen to the voice of experience.
I don’t think someone wrote the instructions on the bag the sapling came in as a stab in the dark. It’s a bit easy for newbs, especially for me, to gain just enough know-how to fool myself into thinking I have things handled. Clearly, I didn’t have things handled. There’s a lot of great advice and step-by-step instructions out there. The internet really does away with the excuse that one just didn’t know. If you somehow don’t have access to the internet, visit your local garden centers or extension services. They’re full of experts that can help. Or maybe read the bag…
Lesson 3: There is a better way to fail.
Here’s the thing about those first two lessons: they’re so boring! If you found any new perspective from them, great. But I sure didn’t. Those are lessons I learned a long time ago. So ultimately through this project, I learned very little of value. And that’s disappointing because there is so much I could have gained through following the instructions on the bag.
That’s not to say that I think experimentation is bad. It’s not! I love experimenting. But in this experiment, I messed with too many variables that it’s hard to know where things went wrong. Was it the soil? The light? The water? The fertilizer? Did it really need to start in a container?… You get the point. So I can’t even say what happened here other than I ignored the instructions (aka the voice of experience) because I wasn’t willing to be patient. Again. Boo!
Lesson 4: Don’t be afraid to try a new way.
I’d like to blame my decision to plant the sapling directly into the ground on laziness. And there’s certainly some truth to that. But as I was reading the care instructions, I became a bit overwhelmed. It sounded like a lot of work for a plant I wasn’t confident I could nurse to a healthy, thriving state. At that point in my gardening life, I really hadn’t had too many successes. I was still questioning whether or not I had a knack for gardening, and the evidence up to that point wasn’t exactly in my favor. There was also the expense of materials which would have effectively been placing a bet on myself that I could successfully grow this sapling. And I wasn’t ready to take on that risk. That lack of confidence can be paralyzing, but it’s important to not let it get the better of you.
So if the instructions tell you to plant it in a container and nurture it for a bit, but you’ve never done that before, try it. And believe in your ability to help it grow. You can do it!
And there you go! I wish I could report that I grew a massive, healthy ponderosa through my magic touch. But at least I learned some new things about myself and received a nice hammering home of old lesson.
Sorry, lil guy! I’ll do better next time.