Yesterday, we discussed learning through experience and failure. Let’s probe that a bit more. Some of you may have had some failures, it’s important to frame them correctly!
We can’t say it enough here, but gardening and growing from seed are hard. Yet, you have to start somewhere. That’s usually a point of knowing almost nothing. The mountain of knowledge is enormous, but you decide to climb it anyway.
And we’re here to tell you, it’s not always going to go as planned. You’re going to send plants to their doom. You’ll find yourself scratching your head, a hundred times, wondering why you can’t get around this supposedly “simple” thing.
From our perspective, growing is synonymous with learning. It’s also subject to the whims and faults of biology. Some things are within your control, some things are not. The learning process is picking all that apart to gain something from it.
In our opinion, failure is one of the strongest teachers. When something goes catastrophically awry, you learn from it. Failure is not a judgement on your ability or character, it’s an opportunity to learn from and hopefully do better next time.
Even if you have it “all figured out,” biology is still going to let you down, a lot. We have a phrase for plants, “They can’t all be winners!” Germinations fail, plants mutate and some plants just tip over for no discernable reason. It’s often you, but not always you.
To us, this is one of the areas we find fascinating about growing. It demands constant self-introspection and external observation. Make no mistake, though. Plants are a complex system, the depths to which even 50+ years of study can’t fully uncover.
So, if you’ve had some problems, pick up the pieces and keep going. Learning is part of the process, there’s no way to short cut it. You could read a dozen books or even hundreds of our posts, but doing it will teach you more than all of that!
