A wonderful lush garden of floral growth topped off with rows of potted flowers thickly habited by colorful plant life – that’s probably how you envision your garden to look like, right? I mean, who begins by focusing on the bad possibilities? But out of all irony, your garden may end up looking like anything BUT wonderful. Perhaps a barren wasteland with soil sadistically choking the life out of your flowering plants is a hyperbolized exaggeration that’s extremely close to your gardening reality.

Maybe you’re wondering where you went wrong or so. Well, a plant’s not going to want to kill itself, you know. It may die because of ignorance, but ignorance itself is something you did TO IT. So what are the common mistakes usually committed in gardening flowering plants? And what are the things you’ve possibly done to kill your precious, gentle, colorful plants?

Too much or too little water.

It’s a rookie mistake. However, it’s a FATAL rookie mistake. Most of the common questions asked by amateur gardeners are related to how often they should water. In a nutshell, I can give you an answer – Goldilocks. Not too much, not too little, but just right. What do I mean by “just right?” You should be able to know dipping a finger into the soil. Check if it’s moist that way regularly, maybe twice a day. If it’s not, it’s time to water. Just don’t water if it’s not feeling dry. Only water your plants if the soil is dry.

Overcrowding.

Like some teenage girls going through trivial “life crises,” delicate flowers also need space. You can’t plant them so close to each other, for their proximity of the presence of one to another will choke them. Their roots will “fight over” the moisture of the soil in just one area. Too much roots of different plants in one area will cause a fight for space that will potentially kill them. Depending on the flowering plant, the space they need is relative.

Too much or too little sunlight.

Water, enough soil, and sunlight are the three basic elements that are essential for plants. You can’t have just two of either of them. You got to have all three. That’s why sunlight is also important. Again with the “Goldilocks” rule – not too much and not too little sunlight would be the ideal amount. Slanted sunlight or sunlight during morning and afternoon hours are less strong compared to vertical sunlight in the heat of noon. Look for a way to give them the right amount of sunlight in one day, which would be around 6 hours. Any more sunlight than that would prove to be unhealthy to your plants. Maybe you could put it under a garden shade that only lets the sunlight hit the plants when the sun is not directly overhead.

Too much fertilizer.

Although I can say that it’s possible to grow some flowers without fertilizers, I can also say that too much fertilizer can kill it. You might think that since fertilizer is good, MORE fertilizer is better. That’s wrong. Stick to the recommendation when you’re mixing it into the soil. Make sure you never get all “trigger-happy” with the fertilizer doses.

Forgetting about the invaders.

Weeds and pests are a headache to the common gardener, but that doesn’t mean it’s unavoidable. I’m reminding you to not be lazy about weeding. No effective garden will come out unless you put your full effort into getting down and plucking the weeds out one by one. Pesticide is also recommended for pests accordingly, but not too much of it. Just spray enough for them to quit eating up your flowers. Don’t overkill.

A noble hobby is gardening. Remember that without any hard work, you won’t have the expected result. If you failed once or a few times before, nothing is still stopping you from giving gardening another shot. So what if you don’t have a so-called “green thumb?” Anyone, including you, can turn a vision of wonderful lush garden patches full of floral life, or a pot full of thriving flowering plant-life, into a reality!