Many gardeners learn about gardening through trial and error. Many people become interested in gardening because they enjoy the thought of fresh fruits and vegetables being available whenever they need them. The most basic gardening technique is to select fruits and vegetables that are well suited for the climate in which a gardener lives because growing tomatoes in deep snow never seems to work out very well.



Some gardeners develop a technique for growing plants by estimating the size of the plant when it is several years old. Many gardeners might not realize how tall a tomato plant can grow even if it is planted in a pot. Some people make the fatal mistake of using miracle growing compounds in the soil and are dumbfounded when they go out to water the plants and find that they have grown tall overnight and are now threatening to topple over because they are as tall as the house.

To become a great gardener a person has to understand soil and the watering techniques that are best suited for that soil. Some homeowners will create gardens on land that slopes downward and do not understand why the shrubbery and bushes grow in that direction too. Some shrubs and bushes might slide downhill all on their own because the soil has been over-watered and there is nothing for the roots of the plants to cling to because the soil has washed away.

Some gardeners will spend a lot of money buying shrubbery because other shrubs that were planted did not fare well and died long before the first season was over. The homeowner never developed any type of soil testing techniques to check for moisture, soil acidity levels or the type of parasites that lived in the soil. These conditions affect the way shrubbery grows and they will have a direct effect on what kills them too.

Many homeowners might have a certain planting style that they prefer to use when planting a vegetable garden and will incorporate this technique into planting bushes, shrubbery and trees throughout the yard. When these plants begin to die the homeowner is perplexed and might contact the nursery where they bought the plants for some advice. The plant nurseries workers might ask if the homeowner planted the trees deep enough and used the right fertilizer in the soil to adjust for the acidic qualities in the soil.

Some home gardeners use specific techniques for testing the amount of sunlight in certain areas of the yard. They will place the same type of potted plant in shaded areas and in places where there is full sunlight. The homeowner is not quite certain about the level of sunlight that these plants needs but they are certain that they need some sort of sunlight to grow properly. If the homeowner had taken the time to read the tag that was attached to the plant, they would already know that the plant in question was a shade tree that needed direct sunlight to grow properly.