While gardening is something that's always been part of my life, 2019 was my first year of really embracing it fully. I've had lots of houseplants for many years, but while I've helped, I've never paid too much attention to outdoor gardening or tried to learn too much. Before this year I participated in some gardening with my mum, always filling a few pots of my own with bedding plants, and helping with some stuff (though never enough) in the vegetable garden, greenhouse, and flower beds. But I was never really involved in the planning or seed-starting or anything like that.

In 2019 I fully embraced gardening, and I started the year with plenty of good intentions. Of course, things don't usually go quite as you planned, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. I learned plenty about gardening this year, from failures, successes, and surprises. Here are some of the lessons I learned over the course of 2019.

Don’t book a 21 day trip in the middle of your 120-day growing season.
Since I launched into full-time freelance copywriting this year, I realized that I was technically location independent. Thanks to convenient holiday booking by a few friends, I had the opportunity to spend 3 weeks visiting my brother in his new town of Terrace, BC. I had plenty of fun. It was really cool to be able to work from somewhere else. But, my trip was from about July 21 to August 11.

Guess what's happening in the garden in those weeks? Everything is starting to ripen. Particularly, peas need to be picked. Peas are a priority crop for us because we all love garden peas. I was gone and mum basically had to handle the whole harvest herself. It felt pretty shitty. I also missed several other things that were ready for harvest during those weeks. Next year I'll plan my visits before planting or after fall harvest.

I am not organized enough to keep a garden journal
I fully intended to keep a garden journal, right from January when we started seedlings, through to the end of the season. It didn't intend it to have long entries, just notes about what, when, and where we planted, significant weather dates, interesting observations, and events. I managed to keep it updated from January 21 until May 12. I think I stopped when I went to Terrace for a week in May, and I never picked it back up. We'll see if I can keep it up in 2020. I did draw up diagrams, with rough estimations of where we planted different vegetable crops this year. I'll do that again next year. Now, I need to find those sheets and make sure they're glued into my garden journal notebook.

THIN the plants. Plant spacing recommendations are there for a reason.
When I'm planting things with small seeds, like carrots, I tend to be a little heavy-handed... There's a reason your seed packages have plant spacing recommendations. Follow them. If you don't, you'll end up with smaller vegetables that are often very tangled together. We ended up with pretty small carrots this year, simply because mum and I didn't have the heart to thin them out. So, thin them out, or space your seeds more appropriately.

Garden vlogs are great, but I need to simplify them if I’m actually going to get them up
I started a series of garden vlogs at the beginning of May. I enjoyed it, and I liked the idea but found that I didn't have a ton of time for editing the videos and actually getting them posted. My latest vlog went up on August 27. After that, I collected footage for several more end of season vlogs. And I've never got round to editing them together and posting them.

That there actually are plants I can grow in my dungeon basement apartment (more on that in the future)
Sometime late in the summer or early in the fall I got the idea to start testing supposed low-light houseplants in my basement suite. My bedroom has two tiny windows, one facing west that gets a lot of shade from a large evergreen and a medium-sized chokecherry tree, and a north window that's under the overhang of a small patio. It's the brightest room in my suite. So, I've collected a variety of supposed low-light plants and I'm watching their progress. So far its been going surprisingly well. I'm hoping to develop these experiments into more regular blog content in 2020.

Follow seeding directions more closely
Maybe my first gardening failure of the year was pansies. Seriously, the easiest garden flower to grow. But I screwed something up and lost a full tray of seedlings. I don't remember the exact details, now, but I realized after a couple of weeks that I hadn't followed the seeding directions correctly, which is probably what led to the failure of my pansy seedlings.

Keep your eyes peeled for pests
We developed an aphid infestation in our seedlings early this spring. For whatever reason, we didn't notice it until we'd already had our seedlings in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, we lost quite a few plants because it was such an infestation when we finally noticed. We did get ladybugs, twice. And they did pretty well. But, we also ended up having to use insecticidal soap, after all our ladybugs had ditched the greenhouse, to finish the job.

Silver Sparkle Pilea is EXTREMELY temperature sensitive
Back to my houseplant experiment. I had a silver sparkle pilea. I loved it. But I accidentally let it dry too much once. It hadn't fully died yet, so I started watering it properly again and set it in my west window sill for a little more light. It had popped up one tiny set of new leaves that were looking promising. But then, we had the first night where it got to about -12. That one set of tiny leaves was toasted. The window sills are still pretty warm, and it wasn't touching the glass, but apparently, it was still too cold for it.

Poinsettias are not poisonous
They're not. I've had to research this for several articles this year. Poinsettia is not poisonous to people or pets. A 50-pound child would have to eat 500 poinsettia leaves to be in danger. You're going to have issues long before a child eats 500 leaves, namely the fact that your child is clearly part bionic if they like to eat green things that could possibly be construed as healthy. For the record, I ate a leaf off our poinsettia about two weeks ago in the middle of lunch, because people were arguing about it. It is not a delightful flavour, but I had zero ill effects.

Marimo Moss balls are pretty cool
I got one. They're fascinating. I'm not sure about the ethical implications of buying them. They seem to be dwindling in numbers in their natural habitat, so probably our fascination with them is not great for their natural survival. On the other hand, perhaps the popularity will help drive some research into them and maybe we'll be able to find out why their numbers are dwindling.

Writing about gardening is actually a real job
Seriously. I actually get paid to write about gardening. I don't get paid to write about gardening on my own blog, but one of my main clients pays me to write gardening blogs on a wide variety of topics and it’s amazing.

The more you learn about gardening the more you realize you don’t know
There's that quote from Einstein: "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." This is probably not surprising, but it’s true... I've learned more about gardening this year than in the rest of my life, probably. And the more I learn, the more I realize I know basically nothing about gardening.

Plant more sweet peas!
Sweet peas are so easy, and rewarding. The more blossoms you cut, the more flowers they produce. So plant them everywhere. They do need something to climb, so don't plant them out in the open unless you're planning to put some stakes or trellises in for them.

Ferns are dicks
Seriously, they just are. Don't try to keep them as houseplants unless you live somewhere that is naturally humid. Ours did fine all summer, and as soon as we started the furnace this fall they were like "NOOOOOOOOOO, I can't go on! I'm going to mope and look like shit forever-more."

Learn to love terra cotta
Seriously. I had a few challenges with houseplants this year with overwatering. I have slowly been switching all my houseplants into terra cotta pots, and they're much happier in general. I don't love the orange of terra cotta, but once you have all of your plants in it, it just kind of fades into a background neutral colour and you don't notice it anymore. Terra cotta dries faster and allows you to bottom water.

Overwatering is worse than underwatering
As mentioned above, I nearly drowned a few plants this year. They'll die more quickly from overwatering than they will from underwatering.

Freshley overalls from Dovetail are the only gardening pants you’ll ever need.
Seriously, get yourself a pair. They are AMAZING.

Rubber gloves for weeding keep your hands and nails cleaner and more moisturized.
Legit, these are better than any other gardening glove I've used. Most gardening gloves are too thick for weeding out little weeds, and your hands still end up dried out. Rubber gloves are thin enough that you can grab small weeds and seedlings, you can feel well through them, they keep your hands from drying out. They also last surprisingly longer than expected. The blue painting gloves you can buy at the hardware store are the best. You can take them off and re-use them for several days. Simply leave them inside out, then flip them the right way, blow a little air into them like a balloon to pop the fingers back the right away, and put them back on.

Buy the damn bulbs, you’ll regret it if you don’t
My grandma bought tulip bulbs for me and mum this fall. We got them in just in time, it legit started snowing as we covered the last bit up. But, I didn't get any Allium bulbs, because they were pretty pricey, and my budget has been tight this year, and I REALLY wish I had.

Ladybugs are fucking awesome
Seriously, they're brutal little pest destroyers. If you have a greenhouse, get some.

Thrillers, Fillers, and Spillers
A great guideline for filling planters. Thriller would be something tall and interesting, filler would be something shorter to fill in the mid-level height, and a spiller that trails over the sides of your pots.

Airplants are weird
Tillandsia, they just are weird. I'm still learning more about them, and trying to keep mine alive through crazy dry Alberta winter.

Water culture for orchids is a thing
Moss is really not that great a medium for orchids. I don't know much about water culture, but I pulled my orchids out of their saturated and rotting moss, and switched them to water culture, we'll see how it goes.

Lettuce is grown outside tasted even better than lettuce from the greenhouse
Seriously. The lettuce we grew in the raised garden beds tasted way better than the stuff we grew in the greenhouse, which tastes way better than the stuff from the grocery store.

Fertilize the tomatoes
We start the year with good intentions to fertilize our tomatoes in the greenhouse at least once a week. But, then we fall off the wagon and barely keep up with watering. But it’s important. We would have had a much better harvest this year if we'd kept it up. Tomatoes are hungry beasts.

Start your glads EARLY
I started my Gladiolus bulbs in pans on April 3rd. I may actually start them even earlier in 2020. They started blooming towards the end of July and lasted all the way through August, and I think there were even a few stragglers left in September. I loved them.

Lemon cucumbers are delightful
They're super yummy, try some.

Starbucks plastic to-go cups aren’t good planters
They're top-heavy. They don't have drainage, and because they have so much soil, it tends to hang onto the water and not dry out fast enough.

DRAINAGE
Everything needs better drainage than I thought it did, hence, switching to terra cotta.

Aphids are assholes
Mealybugs are assholes
Fungus gnats are assholes
I don't think I need to expand on these.

You always need more houseplants
Duh.

Tiny pots, like 5" and smaller need to be watered more than once a week in winter.
Everyone says "oh you have to water your plants less in winter because they need a period of dormancy. This is true. But if you have lots of houseplants in tiny terra cotta pots, you have got to be vigilant. Terra cotta dries fast in normal humidity, but it dries even faster in dry furnace heated air in the winter. I water my small terra cotta potted plants at least twice a week. Some of the smaller ones even three times a week.

Bottom watering for the win.
This is my solution to overwatering. Everything has trays or saucers or is set in a tray for watering. I fill the tray and let them soak up as much as they want. If the water is gone in 10 minutes, I add more, until they stop soaking it up. If there's water left sitting in the saucer after an hour, I dump it.

I am emotionally attached to our trees
Late this fall my mum decided to cut down our ornamental crab apple tree. For good reason, it looks beautiful for 2 weeks of the year, and spends the other 50 dropping rotten crab apples on the sidewalk, my car, the driveway, the flower bed, the lawn… But I’m still sad about it. Unreasonably sad.

So there are just a fraction of things I learned about gardening this year. My goal for 2020 is to prioritize writing for my own blog a little more frequently. There are endless gardening things I can talk about, so cheers to more writing and learning about the topics that I'm most passionate about.

36 Things I Learned About Gardening in 2019