5 Mistakes I Made My First Year Gardening (So You Don't Have To)

[Mike]

I'd love to tell you that my first garden was a lush paradise where I strolled through perfectly spaced rows, picking perfect vegetables and that the rain kept everything perfectly watered.

The reality? It was a bit of a jungle, I wasted a lot of water, and I definitely learned some lessons the hard way.

There is no better way to learn than to fail, and I've learned a lot over the years. If you're planning your first garden this year, here are five things I did wrong so, hopefully, you can avoid making the same mess I did.

1. The Rotary Sprinkler Disaster​

I thought I could just hook up a standard lawn sprinkler and let it do the work. Bad idea! Rotary sprinklers don't care about your garden's boundaries. To hit the plants near the edge of the garden, I had to set the sprinkler to spray well outside the garden too. Depending on the wind that day I still might not be watering the entire garden, I might be watering the grass around it, and (worst of all) the weeds surrounding the garden just as much as my vegetables. It was an inefficient waste of water. While rotary sprinklers may work for some folks, I recommend using something else!

2. Poor Layout Planning (Dead Zones)​

Because I was relying on that rotary sprinkler, I didn't think about zoning my plants based on when they would be finished. I had quick-growing crops right next to long-season crops. Once I harvested the early stuff, the ground sat bare. But, because the peppers next to it still needed water, I had to keep blasting that whole area. I ended up watering "dead zones" of empty dirt, which turned into an outbreak of more grass and weeds, just to keep the rest of the garden alive. I learned that it's best to group plants by watering needs and harvest times so I can shut off irrigation to the sections that are done.

3. The Tomato Jungle​

When you plant a tomato seedling, it looks so small and innocent. I planted mine about 18 inches apart, thinking that'd be plenty of space. Wrong! Fast forward to June and I had created a green wall of vegetation. They grew into each other so thick that I couldn't even see all the tomatoes, let alone reach in to harvest them all without breaking branches. I probably lost, at least, 20% of my harvest just because I couldn't find them all in the jungle.

4. The Okra Gauntlet​

One of my favorite vegetables to grow, and I made the same mistake with my okra as I did with my tomatoes. With the okra, though, it was arguably worse. If you've never grown okra in Texas, you need to know a few things: 1) it gets huge, and 2) the leaves can be itchy and irritating. I planted the rows so close together that by mid-summer I couldn't even walk down the row to cut the okra pods off without throwing on a long-sleeve shirt like I was gearing up for battle. If you can't walk comfortably between each row, you aren't going to want to go out there to harvest.

5. I Made The Garden Too Big (And Planted Way Too Much)​

I was ambitious. I tilled up a massive area because I wanted to grow everything, and a lot of it. The problem with a huge garden, especially if you're working in first-year tilled ground, is that it feels easily manageable in April but, by July, it will own you.

I didn't just use too much space but I also planted too much of certain crops. I only had a few full rows of cucumbers and squash but do you know how much fruit those put off? It sounded real nice until you realize you can't possibly eat 12 cucumbers a day. We were giving bags (literal grocery store bags) of them away to friends and family. We were taking baskets of them to church for folks to grab. Eventually I just stopped harvesting them. I just let those things rot on the vine because I just didn't want to even look at another squash. My advice: only plant what you, and a few close family/friends, will actually eat and know how much one plant will produce!

Conclusion​

Looking back, I probably made gardening 10 times harder than it needed to be just in that first year. I'm sure there are other mistakes I made that year, and I've made quite a few since. But, despite the jungle of tomatoes and okra, the mountain of rotting veggies, and the 4 foot tall weeds surrounding the garden, I'm hooked!

For those of you who have been gardening for a few years, or more, what was the biggest mistake you made in your first garden? Reply below to let us know. Don't let me keep thinking I'm the only one facing this many disasters in one year!