Gardening – the hobby I love to hate

So that heading isn’t exactly right. I don’t hate gardening, I am just not very good at it but I don’t care.

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” —Alfred Austin

Yesterday I was tidying up my veggie garden and pulled this bad boy. Just one sole surviving small carrot. It was exciting – it always is when you realise you grow something but lets be real, I am not about to cancel my weekly veggie order. I planted a whole box full of carrots, at the same time – sure they are a few still growing but I think this is the success story *sigh*

Let’s take a step back to talk about the history of my vegetable garden/s.

I have been trying to get this vegetable garden going for years – YEARS!!! Look how small Jack is in these photos, this was easily 9 years ago. Also look at that pile of little carrots.

This was, as you can see was sort of successful. We paid attention long enough to get these carrots and then life happened and stuff died, kids activities filled our calendar blah blah. We did not throw in the towel completely, we started this garden a few times. We moved things around, learnt more, improved the soil. But it has been a very rough work in progress and it is incredibly frustrating.

A few years ago – before COVID – I decided I was going to start again in earnest, this time I was going to grow tomatoes and carrots and spinach enough for us to not have to buy. (You can stop laughing now, I learnt the hard way).

I charged forth with the naive enthusiasm of a person who has read countless articles on the internet titled “Save money today by growing your own vegetables”. We had a worm farm that was also on its last legs, so we decided instead to get a compost heap going which we did and this has been the most successful thing we have done. We get the most amazing rich, deep, dark compost now. It brings me great joy. It is, however, a lot of work getting the compost because we live in a complex, our garden space is small.

We invested in some raised bed boxes and used our compost to get things going. I was so excited. Things started growing but as things started growing the bugs started feasting. At one stage I had about 10 butternuts, all looking gorgeous and then in night of binge eating some bug zapped them all. The tomatoes started taking over and while we did get some tomatoes, we lost more. Sometimes I planted seeds/seedlings and they would just die, despite my best attempts at preparing the soil, watering, talking etc.

But it was not all bad.

I have had great success with my lettuce. It grows and then seeds and grows more. We do actually eat that and I haven’t bought lettuce in ages.

I have the most beautiful box of sage. It has done so well and the most beautiful purple flower that the bees love.

We had a great spinach crop that David was using daily but then we went away an no one watered it.

My coriander plant has also given us enough leaves to share with my neighbour and freeze.

I have a very healthy chilli plant that I have grown other chili plants from.

So we have had wins.

But if I am honest, it is more the act of gardening that brings me the most joy than the ability to actually feed my family. I realise that sounds counterproductive. I am spending all this time (and some money) on something I don’t need to succeed, obviously if it does I will be extremely happy but the real joy lies in preparing the soil, watering it daily, reveling in the new shoots and celebrating the things that do survive.

Each time we clear out the garden and replant, we are learning more about this process. The soil is getting healthier and I have things popping up on their own. The butternut plant pops up each year, it takes over it’s little corner and I have faith I will figure out to combat the goggas and harvest them. We have a very healthy looking avo tree that started out of our compost.

More than all of that spending a few hours in the garden over the weekend and watering it daily makes me happy. I love seeing the progress and I love just being outside in the calm. I think it is ok to have a hobby you aren’t great at if it feeds your soul.

Do you have a hobby you aren’t very good at?