My First Gardening Experience

Wow, to this day I can still vividly remember my first attempt at gardening. What an experience that was! It was such a disaster that I did not believe I'd ever want to garden again. I nearly decided to turn my casual hobby into the most rage-inducing subject you could possibly bring up to me.

It all started a couple of weeks after I moved into my first home. I was excited just to have my own grass to mow, because I had always lived in apartments and condos and never had a patch of grass to call my own. In between plans to paint the walls and freshen up the inside of the house, I thought it would be a good idea to start a fruit garden so that I could have some fresh produce and put my yard to use. At that point I didn't really know much about gardening. But still in my spunky youthful years, I decided that I didn't need help. I mean, come on, how hard could it be to start a garden and grow stuff?

I already had a grassless patch in my yard where it appeared that the previous owner had attempted to make a garden. But from the looks of thing, whatever attempt they had made turned out to be an utter travesty. The area was full of rocks and weeds, with no signs of any plant life whatsoever. I spent several hours of work spread over several days to clear out the whole area, leaving nothing but dirt behind. At that poi nt, however, I didn't realize the difference between “dirt” and "soil". I was dealing with barren, hard, nutritionless, and unforgiving land.

I really tried hard to make my garden look nice; although I think even someone like Martha Stewart would have probably had a hard time with the mess I was facing. I took some stained boards that I found in my garage (quite convenient, no?) and used them as a border for my garden. They also worked to keep out pests. I also used some of the rocks I had collected from the garden as part of my border.
 
I went to the nursery that very day, and picked out some tasty fruit seeds to plants. I purchased some strawberries, and watermelon seeds. When I got home, I dug a hole in the rock-hard ground and poked the seeds in. After that, I tried to remember to water the area faithfully every day for the next several weeks before realizing that nothing was happening. None of the seeds were growing. But even after I had that realization, I continued to water my "garden" with hopes that my seeds would pull an eleventh hour sprouting surprise. But I finally realized that it was no use, and I was heartbroken. After all those hours of pulling up weeds and casting aside , I had no fruit to show for all my hard work.

So, feeling downhearted and betrayed, I logged onto the internet looking for help. I quickly came across a website that taught me all I needed to know about gardening. I learned about choosing a garden location, how to choose plants for my garden, soil preparation, fertilizing, the best watering conditions, lots of useful tools and a whole lot more. I actually learned learned exactly what I needed to do to get my fruit and vegetable garden going. I learned how to obtain the ideal soil, the best time to plant seeds, when and how much water was needed, etc. After just a few nights of browsing, researching and studying the resources I found on the web, I felt like I was totally ready to try again the next season.

If you're in the position I was, and you're just itching to start a new garden. I urge you to learn from my mistakes. I have done plenty of research on gardening and present it all to you here on gardenbot.com. Sit back, relax and let your gardening learning experience begin now!

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