So you’ve decided to try your hand at gardening, eh? The old green thumb. Mother Nature’s helper. The plant whisperer. Santa’s Little Dirt Baby. Listen, I know you’re qualified. I relate to you and your ambitions. You’ve seen other people’s lush backyard gardens and thriving house plants and you’re positive you, too, can crush the vegetation game. Seriously, how hard could it be?
But before you go getting ambitious af and buying seed packets for turnips and watermelons at Giant, take a quick look at these tips for terrible people, I mean gardeners, such as you and me.
- Rethink this decision. Mull it over pretty hard. Ideally, change your mind and just buy a gardening app or something.
- Oh, you’re really doing this? OK, off to the plant emporium. If you’re not sure where the nearest garden store is, find a lady in a Subaru and follow her.
- Buy the prettiest plants, regardless of price, or compatibility with the other plants you’re buying, or how much sunlight they’ll need, or whether they can physically survive the conditions you’re going to subject them to (an air-conditioned, poorly lit cubicle, e.g.) Buy a 40 lb bag of dirt and an artisanal planter. If you haven’t spend at least $100, you’re doing it wrong.
- Plant those bad misters. They look really good. Success! You are a garden!
- Go out of town for weeks, or slip into a deep melancholy, or forget that you bought the plants, and let those bad misters die. Make sure every one of them dies, even the ones that are allegedly very hard to kill.
- Try again! Back to the plant emporium. Spend $200 this time, because this time you mean business. Ask a plant scientist (salesperson) for suggestions. Get on your own level!
- Read the plant instructions. Plants have instructions?? Note that some plants don’t need to be watered daily. Once a week might suffice.
- Freak out two days later because the plants are looking at you weird and dump an entire rain boot of water on them like the wrath of Poseidon.
- The flowers are all dead.
- Start fresh! Life is all about new beginnings and destroying things and replacing the destroyed things with money. Back to the palace of plants. Try to spend under $50 this time. Those were really expensive life lessons.
- Be really careful not to over-water the plants this time. But… if the sink feels really far away — and it is, it always is — it’s OK to water plants with leftover coffee, tea, coke, or whiskey.
- Hey, sorry, the plants died again.
- Give up! Get a terrarium. I just scored this bad mister from the amazing Holley Simmons’ new venture: Sill Life.
Happy gardening Santa’s Little Dirt Babies!