Learning Through Failure

As I have been working in the garden this fall I have really enjoyed it. However if you were to take a look at it right now you would think that I am an awful gardner. If it was being done for a grade I would deserve an F. Both the pumpkin and squash died and have been pulled out. The corn has never made it past being two feet tall. The serrano plant has at most two to three leaves on it at any one point in time. The tomatoes look like they are 90% dead. Only the green onions, basil and rosemary look decent.

Nonetheless I am learning like crazy. I have learned that the tomatoes probably got too much sun and burned. At first I thought I had drowned them with overwatering so I cut back to twice a week. I think that is what did in the squash and pumpkins. My garden needs a little more water than twice a week since it is elevated off the ground and drains out quickly. I am learning how delicate seedlings are since more than my fair share have died even before making it to be a full plant.

I would be wracked with stress if I was doing this poorly in school. Our schooling system is so unforgiving that kids can give themselves ulcers. The stress can be so much so often that students never learn to love learning. My garden is forgiving. When I make a mistake I get to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it. It does not go permanently on a record that I have killed probably half of the things that I have planted and that the other half is not really productive. What will be seen in a year or two is hopefully a garden where only a few plants have died and that most things are producing wonderful food.

Learning should be fun, not stressful. It should encourage you to learn more about a subject, not fear it to the point where in college we will never take a class about it in fear of not doing well. I hope that everyone who reads this can stop and think about learning and then try to learn something new about anything that suits you.