garden fail friday: an easy to grow fail.

i didn’t kill, maim, mutilate, injure, stunt, disfigure or otherwise destroy any plants this week, so instead of the usual, single-incident fail i thought i’d profile an ongoing fail that’s been plaguing me since march: “an easy to grow herb.” any time a seed packet or seed catalogue description suggests that an herb is easy to grow, i’m certain to have a hell of a time growing it. example one, borage:

this borage is obviously a win, but it took a whole lot of fails to get here. borage is “an easy to grow herb” that gave me about a 5% germination rate when i started seeds in early spring. i don’t know what i did wrong--i treated it the same way i treated every other seed, and the results frustrated me endlessly, taking over a month to get the first and only seedling (pictured above in adulthood). later on i direct-seeded half a dozen borage seeds, of which three came up, and even though 50% is still a pretty terrible germination rate it seemed like a huge victory.

example two, dill:

dill is “an easy to grow herb” that went alright when i grew it inside, but when i tried direct-seeding outside it was a disaster. multiple times i planted a bunch of seeds. one time only one seed sprouted, then after a few days it flopped over and died. another time, in a different location, five came up, grew incredibly slowly, languished with one or two true leaves for a couple weeks, then flopped over and died. a third time i saw the pattern repeating so i pulled them out and gave up.

there are numerous other examples, even extending beyond the realm of herbs--“love-in-a-mist” flower, for instance. the phrase “easy to grow” is an insult and a curse. it’s gotten to the point where i will seriously avoid buying seed packets that indicate their contents are easy to grow because i know i don’t have a chance. perpetual fail.