It's What's Up Wednesday!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how one crop or another always seemed difficult to grow. I was doing everything you were supposed to do, but it felt like something was missing. And then, I would learn some trick, or that common gardening wisdom was making it harder than it needed to be, and by changing just one or two things, something would click and – voila – suddenly that vegetable was no longer hard to grow. In fact, it became easy to grow. 

I finally had all the pieces to the puzzle. 

I had to learn the hard way, how to grow a number of vegetables over the years. But I’m glad I never gave up and stopped growing them because it meant that in the end, I figured it out. 

Spinach was one of those vegetables. For years, I struggled to grow spinach. It was always riddled with leaf miner damage, or it would bolt just as it was finally getting big enough to do anything with. Corn was another. I would do everything right on the back of the seed package and end up with skimpy ears that were half pollinated.

By not giving up, and doing a lot of reading. I have learned so much more than I learned in my dad’s garden growing up. And I’m still learning new things every season, which is one of the reasons I love gardening so much - there's always something new to learn.

What was your toughest vegetable to learn how to grow easily? The one you almost gave up on.