Gardening is like Gambling

I’m not talking about sitting at a slot machine pulling a lever all day and sipping drinks–I might know some relatives like that. I’m also not talking about grabbing some scratch-off tickets from the gas station. This type of gambling is uninformed and rarely leads to big wins. Sure it could happen, but the odds are not in your favor.

I’ve never been much of a gambler, but I’ve been trying my hand at gardening my entire adult life. In the beginning, I didn’t win much. I grew up in the Midwest and remembered the gardens of my grandparents, but I was living in Houston. I was trying to garden based on the timeline and memories of my childhood, as well as what the big box stores were pushing.

This didn’t create much success. It would have been very normal for me to blame myself, declare I was born without the green thumb of my grandparents, and quit. Somehow, probably by the grace of God, I did not. I knew I needed more information. And I just kept trying.

Through tenacity, observation, and failure, I’ve become a pretty good gardener. Each week God is using me to grow other gardeners in the Houston area through in-person consultations, the Learn to Bloom VIP Garden Club, and speaking engagements where I teach The 3 Keys to Garden Success.

My favorite Key is Timing. This is so important no matter where you live! You need to know your growing seasons by figuring out your average high and low temperatures. And you need to know your frost dates. (Zones are not something I don’t find reliable, but that is another article)

We can never 100% predict the weather. We live in a world with random and sometimes crazy heatwaves (over 30 days of triple temps) and freezes (snow in Houston). When this happens, it feels like gambling. I’ve lost two young citrus trees twice in the past 4 years. And that was unfortunate. But even with these extremes I’ve suffered very little loss overall in the garden.

This overall success is based on knowing what grows best when, even if I don’t know for certain, the weather. I know that tomatoes don’t produce fruit when they are too hot and that kale can handle a frost. With this weather information, you can make informed gardening decisions. So yes, there is a chance I might lose a crop to a later-than-normal freeze, but the odds are pretty good that I’m going to win! I’m not just throwing random seeds out the backdoor and wishing.

If you would like to shortcut your Houston area gardening journey, we will begin a new virtual class called the 90-Day Gardener this January. We will go from Zero to Hero in the garden during this three-month coaching class. I will clear out one of the Learn to Bloom garden beds and start from scratch with you. This course will mostly focus on real-time planting and growing in our area for January, February, and March with six live Zoom calls- 2 each month. But it will also include a basic setup and a planting plan. For more information, click here.