How Do You Beat Gardening Burnout?

Babette asks how she can avoid gardening burnout:

OK. I have a question How do you get around gardening burnout? I don’t know if I’ve just had Just gotten too old to want to garden anymore. But the thrill is gone.

Mellisa answers:

Maybe if you quit for awhile? I lose the thrill every summer. Then spring comes and I can’t help it, I have to plant something. It’s exasperating! Then summer comes with the ants and by autumn bidens alba swallows everything. I guess everything has it’s phases

And I wrote:

I do feel like quitting in summer. But the fall weather draws me back into it. Sometimes we try to do too much, too. A big area and lots of different seeds with different planting times can become frustrating, especially when you feel you aren’t doing it well. Instead, I recommend picking a small area, loading it up with good compost, and growing a few things that you love. It’s very encouraging.

And beyond being encouraging, it keeps you in practice! And you must ask…

Why are You Gardening?

It’s important to figure out why you’re gardening. Organic food? Recreation? A satisfying hobby?

For us, it’s my research plot and income, via videos and my writing, as well as the plant nursery.

But also, we started because we wanted to always have food in the ground.

There’s a reason this site is called The Survival Gardener!

We also wanted to save money and have organic homegrown food for our growing family.

2020 got a lot of people gardening when they were worried about the future. You worry less when you know you can grow food, and you get good at growing food by doing it.

It’s not reasonable to assume that your tin of “survival seeds” is going to get you through tough times if you’ve never worked the soil in your backyard and learned over time through success and failure. Sometimes you’ll have luck with a first-time garden, and other times you’ll do terribly. Isn’t it better to not count on luck, but to have experience that teaches you what will thrive in your soil? And give you yields that fill your stomach?

Once you know how to grow in a small space, that experience will allow you to grow a much bigger garden.

Babette knows how to garden. Perhaps a reset isn’t a bad idea.

But for those of you that don’t know, there is nothing like learning to pull good organic food from your own backyard to make you feel better about an uncertain future.

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