Garden Failures for 2021

I would love to talk about all my successes but along with the success I have had a lot of failures and that's a good thing because failure means there is usually a lesson to be learned. This year I made so so many mistakes that I learned from.

Mistake #1:

I tried starting Lisianthus from seed and overwatered the seeds causing the seeds to rot and producing a ton of nasty fungus gnats and wasting tons of very expensive seed.  

      (Fun morning glory picture since I did not get any Lisianthus to even germinate. .  . sigh)

Mistake #2: 

I started my hosta seedlings too late not realizing how long they take to grow/germinate. They were super small when I planted them out. This year I will be starting the seeds within a few weeks and that should help out a lot.

            (Hosta seed parent's flower)

Mistake #3:

I planted my very expensive hostas and forgot to tell my father in law  where I planted them. He thought they were weeds and I had to reorder them. $80 later I learned my lesson.

             (Hosta with October uglies)

Mistake #4:

I did not do enough research and planted my zinnias way too close. I had to thin them out and I still ended up with powdery mildew. Lesson learned: use proper fungicides and space well apart.

        (My zinnia before powdery mildew)

Mistake #5:

I did not look close enough at the heights of some of my plants that I planted from seed and planted carnations and snapdragons at the back of the garden bed when I should have planted them in the front. They did not do as well as they should have with the reduced sunlight. Lesson learned: look at mature plant heights  and widths when planning a flower bed.

                    (My poor snapdragon)

I hope that anyone reading this can learn from my mistakes and that this will be a good record for me to come back to. There will probably be another post since I made lots more mistakes that I would love to share in hopes of keeping others from making the same ones.