5 Downsides to Gardening

5 Downsides to Gardening

Many of the blog posts I do promote growing and preparing your own food. I highlight many of the upsides of growing your own.

Today though, I thought I’d take a look at the other side of the coin, and explore the downsides of gardening and look at what it is that keeps the majority of people in both Canada and the United States from growing even a small portion of their own food.

There are many gardening books, articles, and blogs that will try to convince you that gardening is easy. Sorry, but that is mostly overly romanticized bushwa. Sure, there are many techniques that can make the job easier, and it’s not brain surgery, but gardening does take a certain level of know-how.

The level of difficulty of any particular gardening project can vary widely depending on its scope and goals. Growing a few herbs or a tomato plant or two can be done without much effort, but growing a substantial amount of almost anything takes work, knowhow, discipline, attention to detail, land, and some good luck.

So, in the spirit of being honest and realistic, here are 5 downsides to gardening:

1. Nature just doesn’t give a fuck

Sooner or later if you get into gardening you will learn an essential and unavoidable lesson: Mother nature doesn’t give a fuck. You can work hard, get your timing right, and do everything right and then boom! a hailstorm passes through your neighborhood and 80% of your work is destroyed. Drought, excessive rain, too much heat, too much cold, wind, storms, insects, animals, plant diseases, weeds, other humans, and pollution, all can work against you and your garden. As gardeners, we have no choice but to learn and accept that we are just one element in an ecosystem that has many players, some of which enjoy eating the same foods we do.

Most of the art of gardening is figuring out how to get your garden aligned as well as possible with nature’s forces and how to counteract the forces that move against you. The ebb and flow of these forces are strong enough to keep even the most advanced gardener humble.

The deeper you get into gardening, the more you realize that humans are still just scratching the surface of understanding the complex matrix of interelations that govern the natural world. The honest truth is that nobody really understands how it all works.

 

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