Failure Friday Begins...

There is common misconception that if you are a gardener then you can grow everything and anything. I am here today to tell you that thought is completely false. Every gardener has had plants die on their watch. I cannot count the number of times, I have told someone that I am a horticulturist or that I went to school for horticulture or even that I love plants and I garden in my free time and they respond back with, “I can never do that because I have killed too many plants.”

Let me tell you a little secret in the horticulture industry…

The professionals have probably killed hundreds or even thousands of more plants than you ever have or probably ever will. I have heard horror stories of how an employee a couple years back killed a whole greenhouse (A greenhouse can hold thousands of plants depending on the size) of plants due to chemicals, wrong temperature, lack of water, or too much water. This is not a story I have heard one time at only one company- I have heard that story multiple times from a variety of companies.

Just because you have killed a plant in the past does not mean you cannot grow anything in the future or that you can never be a gardener. One of my favorite plants is lavender and I have learned how to grow lavender through trial and error and yes, I have killed quite a few in my time. Each time I have a failure, I have thought back to what I could have done wrong and what I can do differently next time based off of research. There is a good chance lavender will be a topic on Failure Friday at some point.

Now, am I saying that you should not try to learn best practices when growing plants or neglect plants? No. Our purpose of Failure Fridays is to show you to not to get discouraged when you fail. Maybe even educate you on what we did wrong, so you do not make the same mistakes and hopefully give you a good laugh at our expense. Our goal of Failure Fridays is to once a month motivate people to grow plants and to learn the joy plants can bring even with setbacks.

Happy growing!!

Chelsea