Gardening can sometimes be overwhelming and disappointing because all the effort that has been put in has failed to produce what you wanted. It might be the seeds you have sowed didn’t sprout, the seedling you transplanted all died, your plants grew well but never produce or on the end of the scale you have so much produce and you don’t know what to do with it so it becomes overwhelming.
In the past year something that have really disappointed us and had us overwhelmed where our pea crops which was completed destroyed by mice, snails and slugs, not preserving our parsnip crop correctly and our latest potato crop. So how do you deal with it all when it all getting to much
Accept what has happen and Learn from it
Failures will happen in the garden and this how we learn. For an example our pea crop which was destroyed by mice, I did some research and found rodent only like the dried pea seeds and pea shoots. So we made a plan from there and bought 2 plastic tubs with lids and grew the peas in seedling trays until they were about 75mm tall and in the end we had a awesome pea crop.
Go and look at the positives in the garden
Go for a wander or sit and relax in the garden look at where your garden has comes from to what it is today, look for something that is doing well, enjoy the greenery. Sometime it can be hard to find positivity in your garden when you feel all is failing, so go and take a walk through a friends garden, a local garden, a nursery or just take walk down the street and admire other people gardens.
Make a list of things to do
Trying to maintain your garden and keeping up with produce can sometime be very overwhelming especially while maintaining a full time job. So sit down and make a list of things that need doing and prioritise this list.
Ask for help
Sometime your garden just gets away on you or your having a issue that you can’t resolve. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. A work party of friends or family may be able to help you get back on top of your garden. Don’t forget there are plenty places you can ask for help like facebook, forums
Go back to the basics
Sometimes are garden just get to much for us or it just seem like everything your doing is a failure. Maybe your trying to grow to many new varieties at once, or you just started into gardening and have gone to big to early. Remember you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. This is where you need to stop, maybe take a little break, take a step back and return back to basics. What do I mean return back to basics, if you have grown things successful look at what they were and plant them again, get your confidence back up. If your just new to gardening start off with those that are easier to grow like swiss chard, radishes, onions etc
The amount of produce I have is overwhelming to deal with
In certain season this can certainly happen, its not necessarily a bad problem but can be overwhelming and if not dealt with correctly a whole crop could be wasted, like my parsnip crop which because life was so busy ended going off and into the compost heaps. Our tips are with regarding this is plan ahead with what your are going to do with crop and when it will need harvesting. For example at the moment we are having a lot of tomatoes coming in but not time to bottle them up or make sauce. So at the moment I am bagging them up and when I have time will make up our sauce and canned tomatoes.
Everyone has disappointments and sometimes are completely unpreventable due to things that pop up in our life or the weather. Just remember to enjoy your garden and the produce from it.
Until next time Grow Safe, Grow Organic!