{"id":7782,"date":"2021-05-09T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-09T19:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=7782"},"modified":"2021-05-09T14:35:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-09T19:35:01","slug":"a-beautiful-failure-gardening-from-mistake-to-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2021\/05\/a-beautiful-failure-gardening-from-mistake-to-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Failure: Gardening From Mistake to Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A DAHLIA DISASTER<\/span><\/strong> is looming. It has the potential to be a colossal gardening failure on my part and is already a crushing disappointment. Crushing, but not career-ending. If in fact every single one of the twenty-five dahlia plants which I started from tubers (in the bathtub) meets an early and untimely death in our breakfast room, I will pick up my gardening ego and carry on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have done it before and I will do it again because I am stubborn, and because I think half the time I cause these problems by moving too fast, planting too much, trying to squeeze too much out of too little. And I don\u2019t think I\u2019m ever going to stop being this way. The only good news is that I\u2019ve learned to accept the outcome. Sobriety has definitely taught me this. And that you only have so much control over things. (Well, actually very little control. Especially when it comes to nature.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, if whatever pariah is affecting the dahlias (could be spider mites, could be potting soil with too much nitrogen, could be a temperature swing or a moisture thing, a virus, or God knows what) migrates to the tomato seedlings (which are looking spindly and a little droopy), I will have to beat myself up just a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The problem is that I started way too many things indoors, everything grew super-fast under the new lights, and the weather is still too cold to move anything outside, even during the day. So I am using limited window light to provide plants that need a lot of sun with, well, not enough sun. I should absolutely know better. And just because I am always wishing I had a greenhouse, that doesn\u2019t mean that one is going to magically appear this instant. I should really rig up a little temporary plastic hoop structure outside, but I haven\u2019t had time to do it yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Seedlings are survivors though (yay, we love survivors \u2013 tough cookies!) and my bet is that most of the vegetables, zinnias, cosmos, Thai basil, etc., will power through the less-than-ideal conditions inside and make the transition to the outdoors in a couple weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The dahlias are a different story. One morning at the breakfast table I looked over at the leaves curling on most of the plants and headed for the internet (a frustrating activity if there ever was one. No two dahlia growers agree on anything). By dinner that night I told my partner that I thought the dahlias might all have spider mites (probably from our house plants) and that it might be nearly impossible to eradicate. He looked at my face, and I know he thought I was going to cry. He offered every possible kind of positive encouragement, including suggesting we buy dahlia plants from a local nursery to replace them. He knew how much fun I\u2019d been having planning the dahlia garden<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 lists and charts and pictures cut out of catalogues \u2013 and he\u2019d been planning (still is!) to build me a new raised bed just for these flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We decided we\u2019d simply have to wait and see. So far some still look okay, but several are looking worse, and others that were just starting to leaf out are now relegated to a different part of the house in the hopes that they won\u2019t get contaminated (if in fact it is a virus). They will be the first to go out to the little temporary plastic-covered holding area if I can get going on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If we do lose some or all of the dahlias, we\u2019ll replace some with whatever similar varieties I can find at the nurseries, though certainly not 25 plants (they are pricey!), and sadly it will be hard to find the exact same ones which I chose for color and shape. Maybe in the future I\u2019ll give up on trying to start dahlias inside to get a jump on these gorgeous blooms. But probably not. I\u2019ll come up with what I hope will be a better way to do it next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dahlia Parkland Glory from last year.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m fascinated by the amount of failure I am willing to tolerate when it comes to gardening. You could toss it off to the familiar adages about failures adding up to success<\/a>, etc., etc. But I think there is another reason I put myself through this: I enjoy the process, the doing, the thinking, the reading, the trying, the puzzling, the planting, the watching, the coddling. I like engaging this way so much that even if things don\u2019t work out, I\u2019m still happy. (Some people enjoy banging their heads against the wall repeatedly!)
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So I guess I\u2019d have to agree with Winston Churchill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuccess is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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P.S. Sorry for the late delivery this week. I had my second vaccination yesterday. But now that it\u2019s Sunday, I can wish you Happy Mother\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last year, I paired a little Bishop dahlia with Thai basil and annual pennisetum in a container on the deck. It turned out to be a nice combo, though little Bishop grew quite tall!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Visit cookthevineyard.com<\/a>and sign up for the free weekly newsletter<\/a>. (Something I do as part of my day job.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A DAHLIA DISASTER is looming. It has the potential to be a colossal gardening failure on my part and is already a crushing disappointment. Crushing, but not career-ending. If in fact every single one of the twenty-five dahlia plants which I started from tubers (in the bathtub) meets an early and untimely death in our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[181,149,164,45],"tags":[178,193,194,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7782"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7796,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions\/7796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}