From Sarah’s garden to yours
A good gardener is always learning, and the garden itself is the greatest mentor. It shows you what you are doing right and wrong with dramatic lessons such as an over-abundant harvest or an unhappy plant dying suddenly. The positive experiences, even if they are down to a happy accident, can be taken as a win and so long as we keep doing what we’ve always done in this regard then we shouldn’t go too wrong. However, it would be a good idea to look into why it works the way it does, to account for any variables out of our control along the way.
More often than not it is the problems and difficulties that encourage us to find out more, to discover what went wrong and how to fix it. With a poorly plant threatening to imminently die, an investigation is generally undertaken with a sense of urgency and desperation. This can lead to a great problem around the quality of the advice you find.
In this day and age, we have information overload. Everything we could possibly want to know, and even sometimes things we don’t, can be conveniently found on our screens at the click of a mouse. Unfortunately, with this abundance of great information, there is also bad advice hidden amongst the gems. Great care must be taken when weeding through the large swathes of information, all promising to fix your problem and improve your gardening experience. Understanding what drives this misinformation can help you discern the good from the bad. It helps to look at who does this and why?
Firstly, there is the well-intentioned anecdotal gardener sharing what works for them. A classic example of this is blossom end rot in tomatoes. This is a common problem early in the growing season when the calcium uptake into the plant through the roots is hampered by cold wet soil although inconsistent watering can also be the cause. As the season warms up and dries out, the problem normally sorts itself out. Meanwhile, the well-intentioned gardener has thrown all sorts of remedies at the problem and is led to believe they were responsible for the fix, not the natural process of things. It worked for them, and they’d swear by it.
Another source of poor information are Individual content creators and influencers. They also fall into the category of, “well it works for me”, but there is more to it. Many are just regurgitating information they found online – often from other bloggers or garden influencers. If you look up 10 fun facts about beans and click on every link found on the first page, you will find most of them have exactly the same information. Some do reword things a little, but if you were to dig deeper, you find some of the fun facts have drifted from the truth.
The other reason they copy what others are doing, aside from being on trend, is down to the need to create content; the more content, the more clicks, the more they get noticed and – as an end goal – paid. With catchy title: How to XYZ, it then sets them up as an expert. A common example of this is soaking bananas to release the potassium for plants –science says it is the wrong kind of potassium and isn’t bio available to plants and all the other fermenting things in there with the yeasts chomping down on the sugars, can wreak havoc with the bio communities in the soil – but this one has been around so long people trust it.
Then there are the Content Farms, these are the worst ones because they really don’t care. It’s those hacks and tips you see on social media – the videos you can’t help watching. When watching videos on topics you know little about it can seem like a collection of good ideas but when you watch ones on subjects you know something about, you may start doubting their expertise.
At the end of the day, people have been growing food and gardening for centuries, even as far back as the Neolithic times when the hunter gatherers put down their roots. Our modern desire to improve things, to be better, quicker and more efficient, can go a bit haywire. With the natural world – generally you can’t reinvent the wheel, and you certainly can’t hurry nature. A seed knows what it is doing and has an amazing ability to grow, especially in the wild without interference. The environment is able to meet its needs. It is also dog eat dog and pests and diseases are just part of the cycle of life.
However, in a garden we do have an end goal, to protect our plants so we get the outcome we want and can’t leave it up to chance or misinformation. To find trusted advice, go to a reliable source. Find a university, library or museum where people have spent their lives researching topics, or even an official public department- especially when looking at weeds or diseases that can have an impact on the economy. A trusted and respected business, such as GARDENA or other well-known brands, will also be a safe place – if they lead you astray it is bad for business so often they have horticulturists on their teams making sure what they say is right.
Overseas websites can be reliable but not all of the content is relevant – they may have pests and diseases we don’t and different laws they have to abide by, but for the most part, if you adjust the seasons by 6 months you should be right. Finally, do your research and type in – what is the science behind XYZ and you should find a reliable solution to your gardening problem.
