It isn’t fair to say I’m a bad gardener.
I mean, I am deficient in at the skills of gardening, sure. Very deficient. The sort of deficient that means I would definitely starve if I had to eat only what I grew.
But I don’t think it’s fair to call me a “gardener,” really. I have a garden, yeah. And I have a boatload of gardening stuff. Several shovels and rakes, a few pairs of gardening gloves. I even have one of those little wheeled carts to carry it all. I have a little pad to kneel on, too, but it remains in the plastic wrapper because, well, I have never had to kneel in my garden.
You see, my garden doesn’t die. It never gets that far. Every year, my wife and I say we are going to grow enough to eat, and eat well. Nothing crazy, just a little assortment of the usual suspects in the backyard. And every year, before the school year even ends and the summer really starts, I find a way to kill my damn garden before it’s even a garden.
I can generally keep a few flower pots going through part of the summer. But even those, whether because I get tired of them or because the relative who was supposed to water them while we were away forgets, die before their time, occasionally before lunch.
Two years ago, we decided we were really going to go for it. We swung by the gardening store, bought a few packets of seeds, some soil pods wrapped in a sort of gauze to get them started and a plastic greenhouse.
Jumping into the gardening game with two shovels isn’t a bright idea. Robert Cox, a Colorado State University Extension Agent for horticulture in Arapahoe County, told me that starting small is the right play for new gardeners.
“Starting small is better than going nuts your first year,” he says.
But at least I know I’m not alone in this particular mistake. Cox said he has met novices who plant 15 zucchinis in their first crack at gardening. At the end of the season they end up with about a dozen more zucchinis than they could possibly want. Every day.
The wise move is to plant a few veggies and see if you like it. Then you can go all Farmer Jones on the backyard.
We didn’t have a plan yet where we would plant our soon-to-be thriving garden, but we planned to figure that out once the seedlings were ready to snuggle into the ground.
My wife threw the seeds — cucumber, tomatoes, I think some celery, some pumpkin and a few others — into the pods in the greenhouse. She wrote the name of each plant on a Popsicle stick in green ink and stuck it next to the correct pod. It was adorable.
I cleared off a work bench in the garage and put the greenhouse there. Each day, I strolled to the garage and put a little bit of water delicately on each golf-ball sized pod.
About a week in, things were moving along just as we planned. A few of the seeds had sprouted, and I planned to move them to the yet-to-be-determined site of the garden any day now.
Then, tragedy.
Some animal, I don’t know if it was a mouse or a bird or a giraffe, unleashed a fury on my greenhouse. I must have left the lid off and whatever this monster was tore through nearly every pod, shredding them, leaving dirt and a few little sprouts scattered everywhere. The adorable Popsicle sticks now marking nothing but the wreckage.
While I wasn’t the first and definitely won’t be the last dufus to jump into the garden game too forcefully, There is nobody to share my misery with this particular blunder.
I asked Cox about how to avoid some monster devouring my seeds, and said there wasn’t much I could do. This one, it seems, was an “isolated incident,” he says. But always suspect a squirrel or a rabbit.
Sure, I could cover the seedlings with some chicken wire if I really wanted to, but Cox said rodents are rarely attracted to seeds, so there isn’t much point to it.
I scanned the damage like a detective, looking closely, hoping to see a claw or paw print, something that would tell me what feral beast wrecked the budding little garden. I couldn’t tell what species was responsible, but I set a few extra mousetraps anyway. I make it a point to give the neighborhood sparrows a stink eye now when they pass, too.
It was early in the season, and I suppose we could have started over, but I took nature’s wrath as an omen. Also, I am very lazy and with the perfect excuse to quit, I did.
The next summer, things were going to be different. Before we started with the seeds, we had a plan for where the plants would go. You see, we were so confident we would avoid the missteps of the previous year we figured we needed a solid plan in place for when those seedlings were ready to hit the soil. Because they would be ready, no way we’d ruin them again this year.
So we bought two garden divider sets — not one, two, because I am stupid. I lugged the heavy boxes from the back of the car, through the cluttered garage, past the curious dogs and set them delicately on the soil.
These brown dividers turned one side of my yard — it’s the north side, I have no idea whether that was a good move or not — into eight little square plots. The perfectly square shape just screamed for something to be planted. Even without plants it started to look, almost, like a real garden. We were on our way.
And we decided we were ready to move beyond Popsicle sticks for marking our plants. This time we got some adorable metal spikes that stand about 18-inches tall with the shapes of various veggies carved into the top. When our plants were in the dirt and thriving — which was obviously going to happen, you know — we could easily tell which was which.
So we planted the seeds and laid them in the little plastic greenhouse to get started.
This time, I duct-taped the plastic lid on. That mouse or Tasmanian devil or whatever the hell tore through my seeds the year before was locked out. Problem solved.
After a few days in the cool garage the seeds started to sprout. I watered them dutifully every couple of days, always making sure to slap a piece of tape on the lid when I was done. Each time I felt like I was pouring a few drops out for the sprouts lost to the previous summer’s attack.
Then, I blew it.
As I strolled by the little makeshift greenhouse one Saturday morning, I decided these babies needed a little sunlight. I mean, even I know plants need more light than they were getting in my garage. Plus, it wasn’t particularly warm that early spring morning, just plenty sunny. I plopped the greenhouse on a patio table and made a mental note to grab them later before the afternoon sun could roast the little babies.
Oops. Forgot.
This was easily avoidable, I know now. Cox told me that the way to get sunlight without turning a greenhouse into an EasyBake Oven is to put the greenhouse in an east-facing window. That way you get a few hours of sun, but the sun has long passed by the time the brutal afternoon heat hits.
I stuck my plants outside, on the southside of the house.
“A south window could fry them,” Cox said. He’s right. Trust me, I have experience with this.
If I’m really worried about roasting the seedlings next time, Cox said I could also pop the lid off the greenhouse. That way they get the sun, but the lid doesn’t lock in the heat.
I only realized my error that Monday — about 60 hours and two brutally hot afternoons later. They were crisp. Very crisp, and very dead.But hey, the duct tape was still there. And the neatly-arranged wood dividers were, too. They still are.
That, too, was early enough in the season that I didn’t have to quit. Plus, we bought those dividers, so we discussed getting some plants from the store that had already made it through the sprouting phase, which we couldn’t seem to conquer. Overwhelmed and saddened by so much vegetable carnage and potential work, I skipped that too, assuming I’d just try again next year.
Yes, I am a failure as a gardener. That’s pretty clear. But I am not special.
Cox told me every gardener should expect a fair amount of failure. That’s especially true in Colorado, where the weather can change without warning and your finely-planted garden covered in snow in April or May.
Every year, gardeners should anticipate some failure. After all, Cox says, that’s why farmers buy crop insurance.
“But every year will produce some success, too,” he said.
I don’t know why I keep trying this. I don’t even like what little yard work I absolutely have to do — mowing the lawn, cleaning dog poop and trying to keep the stupid shrubs from overtaking one side of the yard. I guess the idea of growing food for my family intrigues me, but when I get down to it, it really just seems like I’m adding unnecessary chores to my schedule. And I hate chores, ask my mom.
But each spring, when the trees bud and my wife spots some cool garden idea on Pinterest, I’ll get sucked in. Off to the garden shop I’ll go, visions of a thriving vegetable garden dancing in my head.
This year, I’ll say, this is the year my black thumbs turn green. This is the year when that cucumber will really wow my friends and family. “Oh, you grew this, Brandon?” they’ll ask, dripping with envy. You better believe it, I’ll say, right there in my rad little garden. Michelle Obama’s gonna be so damn proud.
That’s all fertilizer, I know.