Top 5 Garden Maintenance Mistakes and how to Avoid Them

This article shares the top five garden maintenance mistakes and how to avoid them. Read on to discover how you can create a flourishing garden and avoid some rookie mistakes!

Life is all about striking balance. Weighing the scales of wellbeing and productivity. Finding time for yourself, work, friends, family, leisure, and creativity.

After all, you work hard each week, and amidst the chaos, you’ve got to find time to eat right, exercise, socialise and nurture your health.

It can be challenging to strike that perfect balance, and sometimes the scales end up tipping to one side or the other, and that is fine. 

Part of finding balance in life is engaging in pursuits that benefit your health and wellbeing, and gardening is an excellent choice for this goal.

Yet gardening can be a steep learning curve, and novice gardeners often make mistakes. Yet making mistakes and learning from them is a part of life – in fact, it’s how most of us learn.

This helpful article will share the top five garden maintenance mistakes and how to avoid them. Read on to discover how you can create a flourishing garden and avoid some rookie mistakes.

Mistake 1 – Overwatering

Watering your garden near your white pvc fencing and garden ornaments is a meditative act.  You can relax as you give life to your garden.

Most people know that plants need two vital ingredients to grow and flourish: water and sunlight. Without these two things, even the hardiest plants will wither and die.

However, too much water can be bad for your plants. If you over-water your garden, you can risk killing your plant friends. This is because plants that grow in too damp soil will be starved of oxygen, which will kill the root system.

A plant’s root system is how it draws nutrients from the earth; without a functioning root system, a plant will die. You can tell if a plant is dying if it shows signs of stunted, slow growth or yellowing and drooping leaves.

You can avoid this by only watering once a week in the cooler months and upping that amount of water during the peak of summer. Also, you can skip the watering if you’ve had heavy rainfall.

Mistake 2 – Mulch Mountains

You might think that the correct way to mulch is to build a mountain of mulch around a tree or a shrub. Novice green thumbs think this is the best way to use mulch and encourage healthy growth.

However, the opposite occurs. The mountain of mulch will hold moisture against the plant’s stems and trunk, which encourages rot. It also makes it a breeding ground for insects and diseases. It can also mess with proper root development.

The solution to this mistake is to spread the mulch evenly across your garden beds, with a layer around 10-15cm deep. You’ll also want to ensure it doesn’t pile up against tree trunks or shrubs.

Mistake 3 – Avoiding Planting Flowers

Some people think they can create a flourishing vegetable and herb garden without flowers. Unfortunately, when they do this, they neglect an essential part of the plant life ecosystem – pollinators.

Plants need pollination to produce fruit, seeds and tubers. Many edible plants such as berries, apples, watermelon, tomatoes, pumpkin and other edible garden varieties need bees, flies, wasps, beetles and butterflies to carry pollen from plant to plant. This will allow your fruit and vegetables to naturally pollinate and produce yields. 

Plant a variety of pollinator-friendly flowers in your garden to fix this mistake. Some great ones include lavender, thyme, fennel, oregano and dill. Other flowering shrubs and bushes are a good idea too. 

Mistake 4 – Planting Things Too Close Together

Would you want to live or work jammed next to somebody with no room to breathe or stretch? Plants don’t like it either!

Your green friends need air circulating around them to spread out their branches and shoot their root systems into the soil.

Cramming all your plants together ensures stunted growth and invites disease. If you are aiming for a big harvest, you should avoid this.

Always read the seed or seedling label or Google it, and follow the recommended spacing intervals for your garden.

Mistake 5 – Planting Too Deep

This mistake is one of the main reasons plants die, and you probably couldn’t figure it out immediately as it is a long, drawn-out death.

If you dig too deep, you’re hamstringing your plants’ ability to grow out of the hole. The trick here is to plant it at the same level as it was in the pot when you bought it.

You might even raise it up a bit if you’re planning on mulching (which you should). 

A tip for planting trees – the root flare, where the base of the trunk widens a bit, should always be above ground.

A Solution Summary

This helpful article shared the top five garden maintenance mistakes and how to avoid them. Follow these tips to ensure your garden thrives and flourishes for years!