Growing dreams real
‘You only get out what you put in’ are words that all gardeners should have engraved on their hearts, on the back of their hands, on gardening tools and — preferably in foot high letters — inscribed on a clearly visible surface, a wall perhaps, which they see at least a dozen times each day.
These few words, with their monumental meaning, are words we gardeners, no matter how experienced we happen to be, tend to forget now and then — but we must not — for they are the foundation of successful gardening.
Beautiful gardens or rooftops / balconies, etc, absolutely overflowing with gorgeous flowers, mouth-watering vegetables, fruits and delectable herbs, do not — unfortunately — create and maintain themselves. Each and every single step of the way is paved with hard work, sweat, dedication and love, spiced up with inspiring horticultural adventures, in the daily outpouring of passion as dreams are grown into reality.
The cold, gray winter days are a perfect time for New Year’s resolutions and a pledge to grow green and ‘do-over’ your garden
If you do not provide suitable growing conditions, seeds and plants fail to thrive.
If you fail to sow seeds correctly — and at the right time for the species — they will not grow and neither will they flourish if soil / compost is not to their individual taste.
If you get the preceding right but fall down on daily maintenance, such as weeding and watering when necessary, then everything goes to waste. Leaving everything to a mali can, undeniably, have the same disastrous results, with, all too often, otherwise avoidable, financial loss incurred too.
Gardening, especially so in our increasingly fickle climate, is not something to merely indulge in when the mood takes you. Plants, like humans, need generous amounts of tender loving care on a daily basis and will suffer, perhaps fatally, if they do not get it.
It may be that — all depending on the size of the area under cultivation of course — an hour a day will suffice to tend all that requires tending but, on the whole and with few seasonal exceptions, this one hour cannot be ‘saved up’ and used as, for example, three hours every third day: this does not work — especially not during hot months when plant life depends on daily watering.
If you do not allocate the time, put in, along with required additions of nourishment, etc, regular hours of what should be enjoyably rewarding work, your garden will not bless you with good results.
All of the above may be perfectly obvious to some readers — although there is no doubt that a reminder does not go amiss — but is perhaps not so obvious to the many new gardeners who have joined our satisfyingly swelling numbers. I am truly delighted to observe, new urban gardeners, of all ages, joining ‘our clan’ with the heartfelt aim of nurturing our environment, indeed our planet, back to ‘green’.
Growing green — meaning using purely organic (chemical free) methods — is of the utmost importance in the ongoing fight against what is now clearly obvious ‘Climate change’.