Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ http://www.teachinggarden.org/
written by Alan R Hickman


I had often wondered how it was that someone who had gardened for decades could still not know the difference between a spade and a shovel, and far less know-how to use either tool.
The paradox was broken one sunny morning in August when a couple of volunteers and I were digging garlic in the Peel Teaching Garden nursery. We were talking about musicians and how their skills often develop to a plateau and then stick there for the remainder of their lives.
Among other things, when not pulling weeds and tending plants, my harvesting companion writes CD reviews. He said there are lots of artists who do well enough to make a living and sell a few records but, at the end of their careers, they were still limited by the same technical mistakes that they were making when they began.
Then he said: "When I am told that someone has 30 years' experience, I often find that they don't. What they actually have is one year's experience thirty times over."
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
Like so many insights, I'm sure this was not the first time that it has been stated - some Greek probably made the same observation two and a half thousand years ago - but this was the first time I had heard the phenomenon explained so succinctly.
It doesn't matter if you are an opera singer, an ice skate, a brain surgeon, a race car driver, or a horse thief, whatever skill set you have needs constant practice, constant stretching and constant criticism.
But, it is of no use practicing every day if every day you make the same mistakes. Petty criminals spend most of their lives in jail because, "every time they get out, they rob another 7-Eleven and omit to pull a stocking over their heads."
No sports team would consider operating without a competent coach, and there are likely a few leaders in any field who do not have personal trainers or coaches. Most successful companies make sure that their staff constantly upgrade their skills to keep them at the top of their game.
Considering that most home gardeners start out with no more training than what they vaguely remember their parents doing or what they pick up from watching the neighbour next door, it is not surprising that marketers find them such easy prey.
Having no knowledge of what comprises fertile soil, many people wonder why it is that, after years of paying for peat moss and additives to dump on their flower beds, their gardens still bake up like a brick in summer and crack open like old concrete.
When it comes to gardening tools, the big-box stores are a marketer's paradise. Most of the basic kit is poorly designed and cheaply built, and the rest of the shelves are filled with expensive gimmicks and gadgets that look good but often offer little if any practical benefit.
There must be hundreds of 'New and Improved' dandelion diggers that are no more effective than a good border-fork skillfully used.
With the help of advertisers, and sales people who may know more about margarine or deck stain than potash, most home owners stumble through their first gardening year, with greater or lesser success, and then repeat the same process season after season.
One of the pleasures of summer in the teaching garden is coaching individual gardeners as they abandon old habits and put into practice the knowledge they had picked up during the previous winter's gardening classes. (See www.teachinggarden.org for the upcoming 2011 gardening course). It is one thing to read or be told about something, but quite another to actually get out in the dirt and do it.
The sense of achievement that comes with learning new skills and techniques is not something which is age dependent. The pleasure is the same whether you are 27 or 72 bu the sooner the better. As one student wrote: "If when I started gardening someone had told me what I've learned at these classes, I'd have saved 30 years of expense and frustration."

High Temperature:
Actual: 14°C mostly sunny Wind NW28km/h P.O.P.8%
Average: 16°C
Record: 29°C in 1946

Low Temperature:
Actual: 2°C clear Wind WNW14km/h P.O.P.0%
Average: 6°C
Record: -7°C in 1964