Of all the excuses people make not to start a garden, one of the most prominent ones is, "I have a brown thumb."
(For any smart aleck that comes to this post, no, I'm not talking about skin color. Clear? On with it, then.)
I have a newsflash for those people. For you, if you're one of the guilty party.
Nobody has a brown thumb.
To claim the proverbial brown thumb is to claim complete ineptitude and incompetence when it comes to growing plants. You tried growing impatiens in your front yard, or bought a handful of houseplants, and they all ended up dying weeks or months later. Therefore, you don't have what it takes to grow plants.
Let's take that logic to its bitter end, shall we? A three-year-old tries to learn to read, but struggles to remember which letters make which sounds, or how to blend them together. After trying valiantly for a few months (probably at an ambitious parent's insistence), he still can't read. Therefore, he is incapable of ever learning to read.
A man who can't carry a tune in a bucket and who has no sense of rhythm takes a few dance classes, but three months later still can't find the beat of the song that he's dancing to. His partner always has to count for him.
He must be hopeless. He wasn't born to dance, and should just give up before the rest of the dance class members laugh him out the door.
Those are real examples from my life. The first is my son, who is dyslexic and did not become a fluent reader until he was twelve. He now can read almost as fast as I can (and I'm a fast reader). The second is my husband, who did finally, after a lot of paying attention and practice, learned to dance to the rhythm of whatever song we were dancing to.
How to turn your thumb from brown to green.
Like reading, or dancing, or gymnastics, or playing basketball, or knitting, or any number of occupations, gardening can be learned with practice and experience. Or, if growing your own food is too overwhelming for you to think about right now, maintaining a ficus tree or peace lily so that they thrive is a mere matter of practice and experience.
"I tried to grow such-and-such a plant, but it died."
So, it died. So figure out the reason it died. Too much water? Not enough? Insufficient lighting? Millions of living things die every second on this planet. It's part of the cycle of life. Something dying at your hand doesn't mean that you're a complete, hopeless failure. It means you learned something. You gained an opportunity for wisdom and knowledge.
And next time, you'll do better.
The key to turning your brown thumb into green is, as with any endeavor, not to give up. Keep trying. Start small.
And...learn.
Don't assume you know what a particular plant needs. Research it. Read books written by people experienced with those particular plants, and do what they tell you.
Then, observe. Tweak and modify their advice when necessary, because not every plant is the same, not every growing environment is the same.
Be honest.
You do not have a brown thumb, in the horticultural sense. No human being does. If you have tried growing things only to watch them die, likely as not it was your lack of experience and knowledge. Or, maybe it wasn't your fault at all.
But if you're convinced you're a "plant killer," at least be honest about why you've up trying to grow things. Admit that you don't want to take the time to experiment and learn to grow plants well. Admit you don't want to go through the work of practicing the skill of gardening. Stop saying, "I have a brown thumb."
On the other hand, if this post has lit a fire under you and you realize that yes, you might actually succeed at gardening, then get out there and get growing!
