I have found my pest problems dramatically decreased after 3yrs of organic gardening and building habitat for praying mantis, small birds, lady bugs, lace wings and lizards. I grow acacia/gleditsia on the border of beds and coppice them to produce stakes for trellising- this allows for lots of preying mantises to hunt and little birds to perch 👍🏻
I get laughed at in my household because I allow the native weeds to grow. I like the edible and medicianal 'weeds' of our zone. Sometimes my best crop is dandelion...lol. But they make great honey, tea and salad.
my biggest gardening mistake is losing interest halfway through spring. I spend all this money, start my seeds, and then forget about it on accident. But now I'm managing my ADHD better and I've been way more successful with maintaining my seedlets.
building soil in a raised bed from the ground up is an attempt to mimmic hundred of thousands of years of geology to make some plants grow better, so when the foundation put into it is flawed itself, it then leads to a cascde effect of weird stuff happening in your garden. thank you for these garden tips
Buying into the “overwatering” warning. I had a dismal year of plants just not doing well and it just ruined gardening for me. We recently got back into gardening and we live in South Africa and our climate is different to that of most gardening channels and articles. I stumbled across an Australian channel and our plants needs a lot more water. I watered a newly plant well - I watered until the water took some time to drain into the soil. That evening I checked on it and it was bone dry for about an inch. I now water my plants a lot and they are beautiful 😬
Mulching can really cut down on the need to water. Artificial irrigation can overtime cause issues but usually on the long term and on massive scale like farms. That being said, if your soil is well draining watering well will give great results, as you have found out.
@@suburbanhomestead we have almost all our plants in pots and have scaled way down to what we can manage, basically just a few flowers as the veggies were too overwhelming. Mulching comes with pests here but watering the plants is my morning and evening meditation almost. I just saw a baby bee on one of the sunflowers - that just made my day
Your are right, they will decimate your plants. One of my biggest garden mistake is over planting, and I refuse to destroy plants that are healthy. I would rather plant 5 plants in a container than throw away 3.
My biggest mistake is over planning. Sounds weird I know. But it’s like I had big plans but I didn’t have the energy to do everything I wanted to. I’m getting older and can’t do everything I want to do. Thanks for the video.
We used to dig up every inch of the garden, and dig it deep to make it fluffy. Now we dig only a fork-wide trench through the center of a garden bed. It saves a ton of digging, and we only dig once and if we keep it covered with garden plants, it doesn't need to be dug again, which we mainly do to clear out the grass~
I remember harlequin bug's decimating my kale, I was knocking them off the plants into soapy water, but losing the battle. The following year I grew all my kale a bit later in the season so it was well established by later autumn and winter, and that really helped (at least where I live), and allowed me to return to a laissez-faire approach to growing vegetables.
My biggest mistake falls under planning as well. I sort of over estimate myself? I know I can do these things, it's making time every day for them that is the hard part.
My biggest mistake is buying the bags of soil for garden beds. I though I will have lots of tomatoes, plant them last June in the new raised bed... Bought top soil, compost in bags at Walmart.. Later in July tomato plants still didn't grow... I checked the dirt and it was still cooking! The temperature of the soil was so hot, no wonder the roots of tomatoes were poor... In the state of emergency mixed the soil with three full wheelbarrows of clay from my back yard... finally in September got a few tomatoes.... :))
Thanks for such a wonderful, calming video. Biggest mistake is not checking if plants/seeds are invasive (e.g. didn’t know about butterfly bush and a lot of popular seed companies don’t educate about this)
My biggest flaw is to let everything go wild too!! The strongest survive, & some just bolt, but at least I have new seed & the bugs are happy!😁Sometimes I allow my weeds to grow on my side fence, because I know it annoys them..😀They are not nice, happy neighbours, so Im justified!!🤣🤣
I let volunteer plants grow as well...the way I see it is free food with very little maintenance. If I need the space, I just pull some out and plant something else there. I can't stand to see empty ground space lol
My biggest mistake is the first one you mentioned; not planning for succession throughout the growing season. It means my ornamental garden looks great in spring but then those flowers go over and i have big gaps.
I too tend to be pretty lenient with pests because I think, Biodiversity!!! and then I end up with zero mint/poppies/cornflowers. The slugs and snails this summer (southern hemisphere) have been out of control! Gonna have to break out the old beer-in-a-half-orange trick, seems like the most humane (and effective!) way to get rid of them.
I think I have learned from this basic mistake: Buying a pretty, flowering nursery plant ($$!) and planting it only to see it slowly deteriorate, wilt and eventually die. It’s usually due to the long, hot and dry summer in Houston. West side afternoon sun is brutal. My native flowering plants in a rain garden (for flooding rainstorms) grows merrily on because…duh!! They’re native!
Lol, like Greg, My biggest gardening mistake is not putting more effort into increasing my soil quality and trying to rely on fertilizer to do all the work. I worked super hard this year on my soil and the payoff was great! I only wish I had better access to good (clean) compost that I could work into all my garden areas. Instead I have to buy bags of it because I can’t really mulch my garden waste as it’s too full of fungus and spider mites.
I'm a covid gardener. My biggest mistake was believing that a garden could be successful in my native soil. My second year of gardening I admired the tomato volunteers that came up. However I learned that we do not have a long enough season for something that sprouts in June to mature before frost comes. The volunteer plants don't stand a chance of maturing so they are just free loaders.
Just recently found your channel, and as a horticulturist myself, I am really enjoying it. The graphics and videoing are outstanding! A mistake that isn't often thought about is keeping a gardening journal. I preach this one whenever I get a chance - like here. I've been keeping some type of a gardening journal for the past 21 years. I've never really been good at keeping a journal of any type. With my garden journals, I don't beat myself up if I don't record every little thing. Likely if I didn't record something this year, I will have a different year. While you can use any kind of a journal, or even your phone to have a video journal, I really like the page a day Moleskin(R) journals. They mostly have enough room for me to jot down what happened in a day, and keep track of plant purchases, etc. It is very nice to be able to go back and see when I harvested the garlic for example in prior years, or how often I did other things like pest control. End of year, I make notes on how the garden did and what tomatoes I would want to repeat, and what were an 'experiment'. Also, I think people don't 'experiment' often enough. Understandably people want success, but like you said in the video, mistakes are a great teacher. Try something new every year. This year, I put some landscape fabric under most, but not all, of my tomatoes. I wanted to see if it helps reduce the disease pressure, since I grow heirloom varieties. One more error people make - don't say 'work in the garden'. 'Work' is a four-letter word! Much better to have fun in the garden. Even weeding is more fun that work! :) Thank you for your channel and efforts!
Well said. And thank you. A garden journal is a great tool. I don’t do a paper one, because the whole channel is it for me, but at times I wish I did, with hand painted illustrations. Maybe I’ll get the time as I get older, but looking back to see varieties, harvests and disease is paramount.
@@suburbanhomestead You're most welcome! I'm an old-fashioned woman, who likes my paper and pen - sometimes even a fountain pen - though normally not for the garden journal. Since I will take it out to the garden from time to time, the fountain pen ink could run and bleed if it got wet. LOL
Number 3 hits a little too close to home. Sometimes when I overplant, I can never weed out the excess, preferring to let a jungle grow to culling. A wonderful video as always, Mr Oliviera :)
Excellent video, thank you for the advise. 2nd year gardener here and my biggest mistake this year was not realizing I need to fertilize my tomatoes. They were planted in compost but I didn’t add any fertilizer. My tomatoes are just now growing and by the time they turn red, worms and rot have gotten to them
Before I knew anything about gardening I thought plants were a lot more fragile than they really are. I thought pruning should be one leaf at a time and anything else would hurt them
I could relate to those lessons! As a new gardener, I feel so happy about the volunteer plants, yes, mostly tomatoes, and then I end up with overcrowded plants and less fruits. Also my raised garden is way to big for working.
My biggest mistake this year was definitely not planning enough, and also having too much of a hands off mentality 😭 My broccolinis and cabbages were destroyed by bugs 😩
I got so excited when you uploaded! Another beautifully made video. Your videos always calm me down and make me feel cheerful which is rare for me. Thank you for all of your hard work (to you and your editors) 💕✨
My mistakes, since moving in last year? Not enough compost. Also, now put perlite in it, since my original soil is too hard. I also need to prune my trees more, since the shade is excessive; learned that when it says part shade on a tag, it still means they need more than dappled shade. City gardening next to a parking lot, though small, has been a learning process I never thought I'd experience. Can't wait for next Spring. Learning from mistakes is the fun part!
These are basically also my biggest mistakes! I sometimes move volunteer plants to other areas or even in a random spot of lawn to see if they have a chance of continuing to grow without taking up the space of the planned crops.
Thanks for your calmness brother 😊 My biggest mistake I made was watering with molasses. I thought I was feeding the soil Bacteria, but endind damaging the whole dang bed!
Thanks for watching David, happy to see you around here. The soil food web can be complex at times. It is both very resilient and finicky. I'm trying to keep it simple with chop and drop, but there is so much to learn, and so little time... We'll have to collab some day.
We might think you’re a pro at farming. We got valuable ideas from your video and we’re going to share your channel with our customers who want to start a farm. Thanks for creating this!
Biggest mistake was not appreciating the importance of identifying your soil and correctly matching plants with soil conditions and potential need for soil amendments. I.e. the sandy soil of NJ is great for tomatoes and blueberries. Not for Rose's and peonies, I learned the hard way :-(
I love your contributions. So different from other informative gardening channels. Your screened garden beds are beautiful. What if you switched out a few of your screened beds with finer, window type screens? Use those for the most vulnerable leafy greens. I’m thinking of reasons to not switch out all of them to window type screens, but insects could enjoy your flowers. Can’t wait for your next film. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Yes I am also thinking of having a set of fine mesh to prevent especially the moths for Brassica, but I'm trying to find something that doesn't cut out too much of the sun. I had a roll of insect screen somewhere that I could use, but haven't gotten to it. Hope you like the upcoming film. It certainly is taking a toll to make.
Another fantastic video from you Siloé. These are the type of videos that I really enjoy. One's that are informative, practical and information I can use. You've hit on some wonderful points. And I'm definitely writing them down for future reference. Keep up the good work and on the videos. I really get a lot out of them, and other people do as well. You're an amazing content provider. I'd love to know you personally.
I planted cover crop seeds last year from Johnny’s seeds. Some alfalfa and summer rye. It’s working really well with no bare soil. Keeping the strawberries, melons, etc., from resting on the soil. Got that idea from Mark at ‘I Am Organic Gardening’.
My biggest mistake is letting things flower and over grow. I need to be more ruthless when it comes to pruning. Last year I ended up with an over grown garden. Native bush rats and a tiger snake moved in because of this.
Back on those wonderful day's wasn't the dirt check to make sure vegetables grow. Just saying, maybe we trying to hard to grow what it should be so simple.
I suffer from many of the same mistakes. I don't know what your zoning laws allow where you are, but ducks love to eat mosquitos and their larva. The also might like your harlequin beetles; I don't know though as I have not had a problem with them. In general, ducks are an amazing help to any garden if you can give them some moderate control over their access to your crops. I think my biggest mistake might be wishful thinking. I live in the PNW where we can grow almost anything, but it is those things that are just out of my zone that I try to grow and fail. Also, a lack of ruthlessness is an enduring obstacle. I also didn't start winter/fall plant starts inside, but I started some from direct seed in the summer. I am busy with a winter/fall cardboard sheet mulching project now. It should take me until Spring to achieve my sheet mulching goals, and then, onward to Spring planting heaven
Technically you need at least 1 acre of land where I live to have fowl. I don't have that. Also keeping animals require a lot more maintenance, but you are right, ducks are great at controlling garden pests. As for planting in fall, because there is less sunlight things don't show as much growth as in spring, which can be discouraging, besides the whole late summer mosquito invasion.
@@suburbanhomestead I understand. Ducks are a luxury, and they do require a lot of maintenance, but their contribution pays dividends in time saved. I do my fall planting in the summer so I have nice, healthy plants going into the fall, but I could have done better with fall/winter starts. If I had really done things right I would still be eating cukes and zukes. but I have lots of cook weather crops ready for fall and some will last without any cover in our mild winter climate. I wish I had gotten fall fava beans in, but I do have a nice crop of fall peas. Time for me to put in the ducks now! Thanks for these wonderful videos, they are so much fun to watch
We had caterpillars turn the kale into lace, but the kale bounced right back, and it tastes a lot better now that it's cold/wet outside, so the bugs didn't eat anything that was useable anyway. It was the same with the wild animals, they ate all the bolty tasting lettuce that was stressed from being in containers, but they left other plants~
That is part of the reason why I don't stress too much about caterpillars in kale. They can be devastating for cabbage and brocolli, but In my opinion harlequin bugs are worse, because they outright kill the plant if allowed to stay, and are harder to pick once the numbers increase.
Removing the leafy part of the plant keeps them from feeding on it. We had aphids on the underside of leaves in the millions, just on a couple radish plants, so the infested leaves ended up in a bucket of hot water, and they haven't been a problem since~
Hi! We just discovered your great channel. Whereabouts are you located? We like to get an idea of what zone other farmers are in to translate to our area. We're in the hills of Western Massachusetts.
I like nature to do its thing and next year the good bugs control the bad always for me in the desert at 70 y/o I don't put anything but homemade compost and tea that's is and my neighbors hate me
my biggest gardening mistake was not pruning my tomatoes, i have struggled the last couple years with getting my tomato plants to produce well, so this year when a couple of them got humungous i let them be, thinking: oooO! i'm going to have a bumper crop....what happened was they got taken over by spiders & i'm soooo afraid of spiders for some reason, i just left the plant to the spiders....i thought, there is no way i can get them out from within the plant so i have a whole section of my garden that i just didnt touch...& it was fine 1 night when i was out doing watering etc....the next night, the spider webs were everywhere, lots of them :(
A long stick can remove the big webs that are in the pathways. Use two long sticks, one on each side of the spider, and in one motion wave through the web and throw the sticks immediately after. The spiders waste their energy anyway by building where humans need to walk. if it's spiders among the plants, just use a garden hose with your thumb on the end, and cut through the leaves to get to the tomatoes at the center~
@@NashvilleMonkey1000 these are within the tomato plants, within the sweet potato leaves, all along throughout basil, over the cabbages...some are near the tops of the tomato plants, but they didnt break with hosing them down. i wish they were in pathways because that's what i usually do is the good ol' swinging stick method..i havent had that problem before, my friends had a spider explosion too...i wonder if it was because we had a very mosquito-y year, longer than normal...we are also in a black widow zone but they tend to be private & 'hide'. i think the ones in the garden are the funnel kind...terrifying lol
Ola Siloe and congratulations .., your videos- are of high quality ... I have a nemesis called white -butterfly .. she eats cabbage like nothing else ... but I grow so many that the plants recover and keep growing ... my cabbages they are Galician- cabbage (couve galega)... super cold resistant too, .. all the best. Keep- on the amazing work!
@@suburbanhomestead and me, but in South Africa the sun is alot strong and sometimes (mid summer) my leafy green will just bolt. They are a winter crop here.
