Early Warning System (EWS!)

[digitS']

What would your advice be to a novice gardener? We have all been there. The little voice in the head: "It will be okay to do it this way." You know, that little voice you heard today and your response was, "No waaay!"

The novice doesn't have the early warning system of experience to correct him or her. What do you expect a novice to be thinking . . . that just leads down the garden path to failure? Here is my idea:

Newbie: "I'll just bury that weed. That will kill it."

Early Warning System (EWS!): "You might be right if it is an annual. A perennial plant has a lot of life in its root. Chances are, it will be baaack."

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Yeah. How 'bout "It's so warm right now, maybe I'll leave the toms and peppers out for the night air".

Which reminds me, I haven't brought them back in yet! Ack!

 

[journey11]

Mine would be... Oh, the weather guy says it's gonna rain. I'll just wait and let the rain water the garden. Those droopy plants will be ok for one more day. NOT!

 

[digitS']

Both of these are somewhat akin to the little voice that says: "Oh, the plants?? I am sure that they are the same as the last time I looked at them!"

Early Warning System (EWS!): "And, when was that?"

Newbie: "I can't quite remember . . . a day, no 3 . . . last Sunday!"

Steve

 

[journey11]

My FIL's advice to me when I was a newbie gardener was to stress the importance of checking on the garden every day, most preferably in the morning.

 

[so lucky]

"Oh, the garden looks so nice and clean right now. I don't think weeds will be a problem."

 

[MontyJ]

"I know the last frost date for my area is still three weeks away, but it's so warm today, I don't think it will frost any more. I going to plant out."

EWS: "You'll be sorry when frost comes two weeks from now."

 

[thistlebloom]

"Oh, the garden looks so nice and clean right now. I don't think weeds will be a problem."

I say that every spring about the entire yard! It always looks so innocent early in the season as things just start budding...then we have a week of warm weather ( like now ) and they just explode!

 

[digitS']

Newbie: "Oh it is such a beautiful day! This rototiller is doing a great job. I've got all of these seeds!

I may as well till up the South Forty and make that a garden, too!"

Early Warning System: "Can you get water to the South Forty? How will you feel on a hot summer day if you are out there weeding all that ground? If you can keep up with maintenance, do you have a use for that truckload of turnips that ground will produce?"

Steve

 

[vfem]

...be aware....be aware...be aware.... be aware....

Not watering because there is 'potential' rain for the next few days, when the garden NEEDS a watering now. No, no, no, no.... you can NOT count on weather people.