From failure to learning moments

When we start something new or get in a new situation failures are bound to happen at some point or another.
We have all been there. Mistakes are made, disasters and failures happen. Most people see this in a negative way, but is it?
I don’t see it as something negative, something to feel bad about. Instead it’s a lesson, a learning moment to teach us to be and get better. No one is perfect and that’s okay. Perfect are boring, and learning is cool. This year I have dealt with my passion fruit arbor collapsing, branches breaking on my peach and elderberries do to too much fruit and lack of pruning. My amaranth are tilting and some stems are broken, and I have aphids and powder mold in my melon bed.
So what have a learned?
Well first of all, I am not growing cantaloupe and honey dew melons again. This is my third try and they always get PM. The Kajari and banana melons I am also growing, looks  great though the mold are spreading.
I have also learned that passion fruits needs a lot of pruning and a strong arbor. I also learned that it will use anything to climb on. It being close by trees or my prickly pear cactus.
I have learned that amaranth needs lots of support, and that I need to prune my trees and berry bushes during winter, or I will get problems.
I also learned that I need to either pick my peaches before the end of July, or cover it up to prevent June bugs from eating them.
Last year we had a problem with critters eating my squash and melons, but I have learned that covering them with soft type gopher nets, closed with a Velcro plant strip keeps them out, and the nets expands as it grows. Putting nets on are so much less work, than picking it all early and then carrying then in and out every day.
My point is that in life and as gardeners we need to fail in order to progress and get better, so don’t feel bad if you don’t succeed the first or second time. Don’t give up. Take a step back and ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Try and look at it as a learning moment, as a scientist. Figure out why it happened and how you can prevent it from happening again. You will be surprised at the opportunities that opens up, when you change your mindset. No more, despair of not getting that you expected, instead it’s wow, that’s interesting I wonder why this happened? Once you figure it out you will feel like the superhuman you are.

I feel better knowing others' mistakes, because sometimes it just feels like I'm stupid.  I'm on try no. 3 for cucumbers this year, and try no. 3 for carrots and I doubt they'll take, at least one is doing well from try no. 2.  I feel silly when I try to grow things and they don't succede, but what I think I need to remind myself is that other things are succeding and did succede.  And just keep trying on the others.  

Thanks for sharing your learning with us, you're so good at what you do, so if you're still learning and having oopsy surprises then I shouldn't really complain when I don't have it all figured out.

I find a lot of value from my mistakes on the homestead. Maybe not at first, but with a little thought they can lead to a lot of value added success in the future.

The big one I had this year comes from rotating beds. I planted a bed of onions that the previous year had a bunch of tomatoes in it. We had a rather mild winter so we had a ton of volunteer tomato plants that ended up shading out a lot of the onions. I did not remove the tomatoes so I ended up with a lot of small bulbs in that particular bed. I believe the one positive I may get out of this is a late season tomato harvest which I'll take!

I'm planning on having my poultry go through and clean my garden beds up at the end of the year, we will see if they do a decent job cleaning up any dropped tomato fruit and their seeds or if I need to start policing the beds a bit more to avoid future volunteers.

My other bed of onions did swell so I have onions to help carry me through part of the winter. I'll take these learnings and carry them over next year.

Riona Abhainn wrote:I feel better knowing others' mistakes, because sometimes it just feels like I'm stupid.  I'm on try no. 3 for cucumbers this year, and try no. 3 for carrots and I doubt they'll take, at least one is doing well from try no. 2.  I feel silly when I try to grow things and they don't succede, but what I think I need to remind myself is that other things are succeding and did succede.  And just keep trying on the others.  

Thanks for sharing your learning with us, you're so good at what you do, so if you're still learning and having oopsy surprises then I shouldn't really complain when I don't have it all figured out.

I am proud of you for persevering. It takes courage to try things again and again, but it’s worth it in the end. You also have the support of everyone here on permies. We all fail. I doubt you will find anyone on permies you hasn’t or isn’t failing in something. When I calculated how much to grow of different things, I prepare for a 25% failure. Something always happens, so I don’t expect to be successful at everything. My melons is a good example. I prepared for combating rats, and ended up having June bugs eating them instead, plus getting aphids and powder mold. This is only my second year trying to grow melons, so I know I am still learning. On the plus side, the peppers I am growing with the melons are the most successful producing peppers I have ever grown.
So, my point is to keep trying and use permies for help, inspiration and to brainstorm. It also helps to write down what you have harvested as you go. Keep a journal, and when you get discouraged look at the list and be happy for what you accomplished.
Carrots and cucumbers can be very hard to grow. It has taken me many years to be successful at growing carrots. What I have learned is to overseed them and to not start them indoors. Carrots don’t like being transplanted. Once there is no more frost I toss a large number of seeds into planters that’s protected from the hot sun we get here, and add plenty of seeds to my onion bed as well. Carrots grow amazingly well with onions. As they grow, I thin them out and we eat the small baby carrots with dinner and I use the tops for pesto or give them to the ducks. After that, I just keep thinning them out for eating until we start getting frost. At that point I harvest and preserve the rest.
As for cucumbers. Cucumbers are delicate and picky with where they like to grow. Even light frost will kill them, and hot sun will make them unhappy. They love drip irrigation, compost and partly shade. They don’t like it, when it gets too hot. They also need attention every other day, once they start producing. If you miss a cucumber and it gets fully/over ripe, the plant will die. Not paying attention to them is the most common mistake people make growing cucumbers. I start mine indoors, and when ready I harden them for 2 weeks before I transplant them. In the bed I grow cucumbers, I also grow things like lettuce, okra and cassava. The lettuce and okra are more attractive for aphids and other bugs than the cucumbers, so it helps with pest control.
I hope this helps you. If not, make a post and you will find many helping hands here and it will help you brain storm solutions.