Am I a competent gardener?

Before I answer this, I need to add some context. If you follow me on other social media, you will see posts on running, walking, playing sports, watching sports, socialising. There are not many, if any, of gardening. It's not that I'm bad at it, I'd just prefer to go for a ten-mile run than weed the flower beds.

Now lockdown made us realise that we've not really paid too much attention to our outdoor rooms and we invested in some professional help. And now we have a wonderful outdoor space that we're quite pleased with and very much enjoy spending time in it. The downside is that we feel obligated to look after it.

So focusing on our new lawn, that's got to be reasonably easy to look after, right? It had bedded in well and all was rosy, until those pesky weeds starting appearing. Asking a few more green-fingered friends they encouraged me to consider feeding the lawn with stuff that will enrich the grass and get rid of the weeds.

This sounded simple enough until I tried to buy some. The choice was somewhat overwhelming, with products for different types of grass, different seasons, methods of application and how long I want it to last. Needless to say, after speaking to the expert in the garden centre, I bought the one that I couldn't go wrong with!!

As a novice, I dutifully watched some relevant videos from the product supplier and other experts on this skill. All seemed reasonably straightforward; we had a lawn-feed spreader (which probably means some time in the recent past we had done this before ??) so I filled the bucket up and off I went. Except the spreader wasn't letting any feed out! A few technical adjustments later and I managed to change the setting and off I went.

It was quite satisfying and straightforward. The area where most weeds were even got a second helping.

So, if you have done this before, you probably already know what has happened. It seems most of those green-fingered friends also knew what was going to happen - they've done it too!

There is no doubt, the weed and feed works. Indeed, it has resulted in a lawn that is lush and almost weed-free.

But as this image shows, that's on the 80% of the lawn that I did competently. On the other 20%, the results are plain to see.

So, my inexperience meant that I over-fed parts of the lawn and killed it; and on other parts, I just seemed to have failed to apply any feed. On the parts I've killed I have had to learn how to patch repair; we're waiting to see how well this has been undertaken.

So am I a competent gardener? Well, I've got some skills and some knowledge and now I have some experience. Next time, I'll hopefully learn from this experience and the outcome will be more consistent and then I am on my way to improving my competency.

Thanks for reading if you have got this far, however, what can we take from this insight into my ability to garden. For me,

1. we often don't know how good we are until we try
2. there's always guidance out there to help you develop your knowledge and understanding
3. if you want to learn something, someone will have posted it on YouTube
4. perfection does not happen on your first attempt
5. and when you do it wrong, you can rectify the situation - this is where most learning is
6. to improve, you have to go again, having reflected on past experience

What do you take from this? Let me know in the comments box below.

I have been assessing the digital competency of contracting organisations in construction; my assessment so far - it's like me as a gardener! I'm holding a webinar on Wednesday to highlight my views on what can be done to improve the situation. You can register for the Webinar on Improving Digital Competency in Construction by clicking on the image/link below.

Ok, now I'm off to watch some Olympics ...