Gardening mishaps can happen to anyone, even seasoned green thumbs; it’s just the nature of growing vegetables and fruits. Yet, even the smallest mistakes can affect a harvest if you don’t catch them in time.
Thankfully, many of these common errors are easy to fix. Understanding what can go wrong and why is the first step to saving yourself heartache come harvest time. Arming yourself with knowledge before starting to plant can lead to a happier, healthier growing season.
Planting the Wrong Crops
When you start your gardening journey, it’s essential to consider what type of harvest you’d like to have. Some plants grow quickly, and others require more involvement to ensure they thrive.
To decide beforehand what gardening process you’d like, research what crops you can grow. If you prefer a quick crop or a more unique garden, that will help you decide. Consider your options based on your time, space, and what suits your needs.
Improper Spacing
Knowing how to space your garden plants correctly is imperative for a healthy, happy harvest. Planting crops too close together stresses them out and can prevent and stall their growth.
The key to getting the spacing right is simple. When choosing what crops to grow, look at the information on their packaging, which should indicate how far they need to be spaced from other plants in the garden.
The Wrong Soil
Soil is a huge factor in a plentiful harvest. It creates a happy environment for plants to thrive, and choosing the wrong soil can stifle their growth.
Researching what soil is best for the crops you’re interested in ahead of time will save you much grief. Take time also to examine what soil is native to where you’re starting your garden using your yard. You’ll likely need to till and enrich your existing dirt.
Over Watering
Your garden desperately needs water, but not too much. If you overwater your plants, root death will occur, preventing healthy growth. But what defines too much?
One way to spot overwatered crops is if they have a yellow tint in color. The dim yellow shade indicates that their growth has been stunned. Depending on the type of plant, you might have to repot or replant them entirely.
Under Watering
Underwatering your crops can also be harmful to them. If you notice your crops are wilting, yellowing, crispy, dropping leaves, or have dry soil, you probably need to water them more.
However, you can save your plants from underwater watering in various ways. First, prune away the clearly affected areas, that will help the as yet unaffected areas redirect. Then, once you’ve determined the rest of the plant is viable, just add water and be patient with the process.
Not Planning Ahead
Proactively planning out your garden is the key to ensuring your plants grow correctly and efficiently. This way, you can keep your crops on a schedule and be more likely to notice when something is wrong with them.
The planning process should go from beginning to end. Consider what crops you want, what soil they need, growth time, inconsistencies, and how to identify what they need.
Not Keeping Any Records
Similar to planning ahead, keeping track of your harvest while it’s growing is the key to keeping it healthy and thriving. Keep records of what plants you’re growing, where they are in the process, and how they’re doing will help you keep it all straight.
Farmers often keep crop record books to document and track important information about their harvest. These books can record fertilizing dates, crop yields, pest levels, and diseases.
Over Planting
Since soil is one of the main factors in a healthy harvest, it’s crucial to consider over-planting. If you plant crops repeatedly in the same soil, the soil will eventually degrade.
When the soil starts to degrade, it loses the nutrients the crops need to survive and grow, ruining the soil’s fertility. Essentially, this sterilizes the soil, eventually leading to crop death.
Under Planting
Underplanting your crops can be just as bad for their health as overplanting. Not planting enough into the soil can cause stress on your plants, causing failure to thrive.
Not properly spacing out enough crops can cause faster pest infestations, soil compaction, allopathy, and conflict between plant types. To avoid underplanting, research spacing, friendly plant pairs, soil, and watering times.
Time Management
Proper time management is crucial to most things in life, and harvesting healthy crops is no exception. Prioritizing tasks when it comes to gardening can help in various areas, and keeping track of those tasks goes hand in hand.
Having good time management skills can help with cost savings, better crop yields, and sustainable farming practices.
Planting Too Early
Speaking of time management, you must consider the timing of planting each crop. Planting too early (especially in cooler temperatures) can cause wilting, stunted growth, foliage necrosis, surface pitting, and susceptibility to desire.
Take the time to research what seasons are best for growing each plant. Low soil temperatures will stunt plant growth and prevent the roots from developing.
Planting Too Late
Just like planting too early can cause issues, so can planting too late. The best temperatures for harvesting are generally between 55-65ºF in the early summertime.
The most common impact of late planting is plant heaving, which occurs when the freeze-thaw cycles push newly installed plants out of the ground. This happens because their roots don’t get a chance to anchor in the soil.
Ignoring Weeds
Do not ignore the weeds! If you start seeing weeds growing in your garden, remove them immediately. Weeds take the nutrients away from the plants you’ve planted in their fresh soils because they also need them to continue to grow.
Look for the weeds when they are just seedlings because they are easier to dig up when tiny. You can scoop them away with gardening tools when they are seedlings, whereas they are considerably more challenging to get rid of the longer they grow.