As many of you know, I am a mostly self-taught gardener. I have experimented with all kinds of things at my home and with my students at the farm. Some of the lessons I have learned over the years from failure and success:
– Kale germinates quickly and can grow just about anywhere. It’s my GOAT green.
– My front yard doesn’t get as much direct sunlight as I would like, so sometimes my growing options are limited
– My very shady backyard is good for herbs only
– Bush beans are my go-to summer plant. They always do well and produce more when you pick them.
– Onions and garlic are an easy choice to plant at the farm because they are so low-maintenance and get the sun they need.
– Carrots still frustrate me. Such a little success rate for all the videos I have watched!
That last one, makes me feel a bit like Captain Ahab, a little obsessed with how I can find that white whale of a resource that will help me grow carrots. By looking on the internet though, I have been increasingly disturbed by the number of videos and images that are clearly AI generated targeted at beginner gardeners. Some of the videos/images are about shortcuts to planting onions, or tulips, or garlic. For instance, one of the most popular ones is about how you can plant a bunch of bulbs by digging a trench, putting the bulbs in egg cartons, and then covering them with dirt. Look at the one below:
This is wrong on a number of levels (same bulb but 3 different varieties of plants?!).
Using the internet is now like having to use daily all the skills I learned from playing spot the difference with side by side images. Did you notice any differences in the one above? (Hint: Look at the patio and the house/shed and you’ll find some).
What about this one on planting onions:
THE ONIONS ARE ALREADY FULL GROWN SIZE! Are those egg cartons for ostrich eggs?
So what purpose do these videos serve? My guess is revenue generators on YouTube. The more views, the more $. Unfortunately, these people are only sowing figurative seeds of disinformation, not literal seeds that benefit others. I would hate to see someone get soured on gardening because they spent a lot of money after falling for a short video with no sources instead of, say, asking a tulip grower to explain why they do what they do with their bulbs.
Shortcuts in the garden are great if they actually work and save us labor. A great modern example is seed snails; they are the new trend and some gardeners are seeing really great results. Others find it too messy and fiddly and just keep using trays. There is so much about gardening that just depends on preference and weather conditions.
My hope for you and for my students is that we can all take a crash course in media literacy by discerning what is “Gardenmaxxing” internet garbage and what is actually helpful by getting outside and playing in the dirt ourselves. It’s good to take some low stakes risks based on solid research in order to learn.
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