We came to the realization yesterday that we f’d up. We f’d up bad. We like to admit our failures, publicly, because we hope to inspire newer gardeners that might have f’d up a hundred times. Maybe even those that might have killed some plants. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been growing, things can happen and it’s important for us to show it as public gardening mentors.
We realized yesterday that we entirely forgot to sow violas this year. This might seem like a simple oversight and no big deal. For context, we are intimately familiar with the genetic relationship between violas and pansies. We literally conflate the two in our seeding schedule since they are so strongly genetically tied to one another. Essentially, violas are just smaller pansy flowers, effectively a variant of the original pansy. We know this. The concept has long been baked into our growing prowess, a fact we don’t easily just forget.
We literally “forgot” to sow violas this year. Worse, we literally sowed our pansies and they are in our greenhouse now, well established, and darn near ready to start flowering. This might have been easily overlooked if it weren’t for the fact that violas are literally some of our most favorite flowers in our gardens. We’ve spent years now exploring the incredible varieties of violas that are available, eagerly seeking out the next edgy viola. We even purchased three brand new varieties of viola this year, intending on offering them to our readers as some of our most fantastic, early flowers. Part of our “growing soul” is tied to violas, if you will.
But, somehow, all of this entirely escaped us this year and we are only now catching it over a month too late. It’s the first time we’ve honestly “forgotten” to sow an entire genus. We are generally meticulous enough with our seeding schedules to ensure this doesn’t happen. We still can’t explain ourselves. But, it’s also a moment where we can throw ourselves in front of you and help you realize that even the most “expert” growers still make major mistakes.
So, yesterday, we frantically sowed our violas, a full 5 weeks later than we had intended. They aren’t going to be ready for early blooms, like we intended. We aren’t going to get the dozens upon dozens of volunteer violas, that we know and love, spreading throughout our yard this year. They might, if we are lucky, produce a few late season flowers at this point. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a few seeds that survive the winter and pop up surprisingly next year. But, we aren’t counting on it.
If you’ve made some mistakes this year, let it go. There’s always next year. There’s always next time. It doesn’t matter how good you get at this stuff, you’re always going to make mistakes. Let it go. The most important thing is that you keep trying!
