The Joy of Delayed Gratification in Gardening

Good things come to those that wait, right? In this episode, Janey talks about the challenges of waiting in the garden and discusses the importance of delayed gratification, not only in gardening, but in life! 

You can’t rush Mother Nature and trying will only lead to frustration. Gardening is a practice in patience, a practice in mindfulness and Janey talks how the garden can teach us to slow down and appreciate all stages of your garden’s lifecycle. The garden can be a powerful teacher and Janey encourages you to find the beauty in each stage of the journey.

So whether you're starting from seed or nurturing young plants, this episode is a reminder to slow down, enjoy the process, and trust that everything grows in its own time. After all, that’s what gardening is all about! 

Love what you’re hearing?

Make sure to check out more from Janey:

Store
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

Dig, Plant, Water, Repeat is produced in association with Caloroga Shark Media. Hear other shows from Caloroga Shark along with subscription info and Merch with free shipping here!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Support for this podcast comes from Proven Winners, the plant
brand that gardeners of all experienced levels trust the most,
and the brand that I have personally trusted in my
own gardening journey since twenty twenty. Proven Winners selections, including annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, bulbs,
and even houseplants are simply amazing and all are trialed, tested,

(00:22):
and specifically chosen for one purpose and one purpose only
to ensure gardener success. Visit Provenwinners dot com and find
your next favorite plant today. Callarogashawk Media. Hi everyone, Janie here,

(00:54):
Welcome back to my garden and welcome back to the
Dig Plant, Water Repeat Podcast. I wanted to come on
the podcast and talk about something that I have trouble with.
I have a lot of trouble with in the garden
and really in my life, and that is delayed gratification.
I am impatient. I love Aaron Shannon's YouTube, her website name.

(01:19):
She calls herself the Impatient Gardener, and I just relate
to that so much because I feel like I'm an
impatient gardener as well. But yesterday I went to a
garden center near me. It's in Richmond, California. It's called
Annie's Annuals and Perennials. A lot of you have probably
heard of Annie's Annuels. It is such a fabulous garden center.

(01:40):
They also have an online shop, and it has the
most interesting and the most unique plants that I've ever seen.
They're so cool. The thing about Annie's Annuels, though, is
that they sell ninety nine point nine percent of their
plants in little four inch pots and their little three
inch I don't want to call them seeply. They're bigger

(02:00):
than seedlanes, but they're very very small plants and mostly
without blooms. And it's so funny. I was there and
I was looking at their display gardens. Their display gardens
are peak right now in September. Everything is just looking
so beautiful, all this color, all these blooms, all these
interesting textures, And when you're there looking at the display gardens,

(02:25):
you immediately want to run over and grab the plant
for your own garden, because you want that in your garden.
But at Annie's you go grab the plant and you
get this little tiny four inch pot with a three
inch plant in it, and it looks nothing like what's
in the display garden, and I found myself. I'm gonna
be honest, I found myself a little disappointed. I wanted
the big, beautiful plant with blooms all over it. I

(02:48):
wanted it. I wanted that immediate, immediate payoff, and Annie's
doesn't provide that. And they even have signs on their
plant tables telling us to grab a plant that's too
big because that plant is not going to transplant well
into our garden. And it got me thinking about the

(03:09):
importance of delayed gratification in our gardens. Delayed gratification is
I think it's really hard in gardening. Honestly, I think
it's really hard in life. But in gardening, things go
so slow. You can't speed up mother nature at all.
You can't tell a seed to grow faster. You can't

(03:31):
tell a plant to bloom when you want it to
plant when you want it to bloom. You have to
let mother nature take its time. And when we start
fighting that, that's when we start getting frustrated in our garden.
And I find myself fighting that sometimes. So this visit
to Annie's was just a good reminder to myself to
slow down, to really take the time, to be mindful

(03:55):
of what's going on. In my garden and let these
plants grow on their own time, let other nature take over.
I'll be the first to admit that I am a
person who likes immediate results. I like my shows to
wrap up at the end of the season. I don't
want to wait for the next season. I order from

(04:16):
Amazon because I want overnight shipping. I want things to
happen when I want them to happen. I want it
to be quick. I've always been kind of a type
a personality. I make to do lists, I get things done,
and when things take too long, I get frustrated. So
why do I like gardening so much? Because gardening is

(04:39):
exactly the opposite right. Gardening takes its own time. I
can't speed it up with a to do list or
anything like that. It encourages mindfulness, and that's why I
love gardening so much. It encourages me to practice mindfulness.
And it's the most beautiful way that I found that
I can practice mindfulness. And we're focused on immediate results,

(05:02):
like buying that huge plant, that huge five gallon plant
with blooms all over it, we often miss the beauty
of the process of growing from that three inch tiny
plant to getting their first buds, to the buds opening up,
and then seeing that plant really really mature. Gardening allows
us to slow down appreciate each stage, from the sprouting

(05:25):
seeds to the first buds, to the plant even setting
seeds and finishing its season right. It allows us to
really focus on the beauty of it. But I still
need that reminder it's slow down, slow down a little bit.
Let's practice. Let's practice delayed gratification because it really will
benefit us as gardeners in the long run. So one

(05:49):
of the things I was thinking about delayed gratification is
like Annie's choosing the right size plant or choosing the
right size tree. I learned and in master gardeners not
to choose too big of a tree in your garden.
Well I shouldn't say not to, I should say there's
no benefit to choosing a big tree in your garden

(06:10):
because if you choose a smaller tree, say like a
three gallon tree, as opposed to a fifteen gallon tree
or a twenty five gallon tree, that tree is going
to catch up in growth in three years, and that
tree is going to be better rooted in and it's
going to be more healthy than if you started with
a giant, giant tree immediately. Now I totally see the benefit.

(06:32):
Some of us don't have three years to wait. Some
of us want shade immediately. But if you have the choice,
it's not a bad idea to buy that smaller tree
on purpose, on purpose so that you can allow that
tree to take its time to settle in to its
own home, and that tree is going to be happier

(06:52):
in the long run. Delayed gratification for us, but a
benefit for nature and for that tree. When I was
at Annie's, I was just reminded of this lesson that
I learned in Master Gardeners, and the lesson was about
ornamental trees and master gardeners. But the Annie's concept of
selling these four inch pots, these small four inch pots,

(07:14):
absolutely makes sense. And it's the same concept. By us
waiting and being patient and letting the plant or the
tree take its own time to grow, it gives us
a better result. It gives us a healthier plant, a
happier plant, a plant that's going to last longer in
our garden. Another delayed gratification in gardening is one that

(07:36):
it's so funny. I completely ignored it for the first
couple of years. Of my gardening life, my gardening career,
and that was the concept of biennials. A biennial is
a plant that the first year it grows foliage so
that it can soak up the sun and get enough
energy for the second year to bloom. So biennials don't

(07:57):
bloom the first year. They only bloom the second year,
and they usually only last two years. After the second year,
they set seed and then they die. So at first
in gardening, I thought, who would plant a bi annual?
Who would wait a whole year to get blooms? Why
would you do that? Why would you even bother doing that?

(08:17):
And then I went to my friend Deb's house. Deb
has been on this podcast. She has talked about sowing seeds.
She's a wonderful human being, and she has a beautiful garden.
Deb has patients. Deb has planted biennials in her garden
and they are absolutely beautiful. And when I saw her
fox gloves, her peach fox gloves that were biennials and

(08:40):
they had actually grown the second year, I was I understood.
I understood the benefit of waiting that whole first year
to get blooms the second year, because the payoff is
so worth it, and so rewarding, and deb was so
proud of her of her plants that she had grown,
and she had and patient and she had waited and

(09:01):
they were just absolutely beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I actually, I'm
really proud of myself. I have biannuals in my garden now,
and one of them is actually from Annie's annuals, and
it's called Tower of Jewels. They're echiums. They're these weird,
weird plants and they're biannuals. And the second year they

(09:23):
have these beautiful, huge, spiky blooms and they're just they're
just the most interesting thing you've ever seen in your garden.
So I bought a couple of them. I bought Tower
of Jewels and I bought Pride of Madeira and they've
been sitting in my garden all year and they have
foliage and they're doing well. But they've done nothing. And

(09:44):
I am so excited about next year when my echiom
will start blooming. And I think when they start blooming,
I will really appreciate the reward of slowing down, slowing
down and taking the time and investing in the future.

(10:04):
We're going to take a quick break to hear a
message from our sponsor. We'll be back in just a sec.
Welcome back. We are talking about delayed gratification in the

(10:25):
garden and how it promotes mindfulness and really paying attention
to nature and nature's timing, not our own timing. Our
world is so fast these days, you know, watching reels.
You can watch kind of a whole episode in thirty
seconds if you watch a reel or a TikTok, and
it's sometimes it's nice to slow down. Sometimes it benefits

(10:49):
us to take the time to slow down. And I
think gardening is just key with that. It's gold and
it helps me out so much to slow down. It
forces me to slow down, really, is what I should say.
So we talked about picking a smaller sized plant, the
benefits of that, and letting that plant grow in its
own home, develop its root system before it starts blooming

(11:13):
and really showing off. And we've talked about biennials kind
of like the same thing. It takes a whole season
for some biennials to start growing and blooming, and you
got to be patient because the reward is just so
incredibly worth it. I also think another delayed gratification in

(11:33):
gardening is starting everything from seed. I heard a funny
joke about starting things from seed. When you hear a
gardener tell you that they started that plant from seed,
whether it's a flower or whether it's a vegetable, they're
low key flexing on you. And yes, one hundred percent,

(11:54):
absolutely one hundred percent because starting something from seed it
takes patients. You have to sow the seed, you have
to water that seed and make sure that it germinates
and grows, and then transplant it if you're growing it
in cell trays, and then take care of it. And
then once it finally starts blooming or producing fruit, you
can flex. You can flex on that because that is

(12:18):
delayed gratification, and the reward of that flower that you
grow from seed, or that tomato that you grew from
seed is so much more precious than if you just
bought a full grown plant from the garden center. I
think so I just laughed at that joke. I thought
that that was so funny, but it's true. Starting things
from seed. Not only is it economical, not only is

(12:41):
it fun because you have so many different varieties, but
it also gives you more of a reward because it's
delayed gratification. So when I say this, I'm giving myself
advice more than I'm giving any of you listening advice,
and that is to cultivate patients in garden. Take the time,

(13:02):
take the time to let things grow, get off your
own schedule and get on mother Nature's schedule. And I
was thinking about a couple ways to kind of make
cultivating patients a little bit easier for us. I think
growing a mix of plants is key. I think putting
in lots of annuals, because annuals give you that immediate
bang for your buck, but then mixing that in with

(13:25):
some more slow growing perennials or Annie's annuals that take
a while to grow. Mix it so that you can
really focus on the annuals that are beautiful and it
gives you the payoff. But then also you can still
be patient and take the time for those slower growers
and those will pay off eventually. I love that in
a garden. When I first moved into my garden, I

(13:45):
knew I wanted to fill it the first year with
cut flowers, annuals, all that kind of stuff, so I
had beautiful things to look at while I was waiting
for my shrubs and my perennials to grow a little
bit bigger. So starting with a mix I think will
help with your delayed gratification kind of make it easier
to swallow the other thing that I think is so important.

(14:07):
And for those of you who watch my YouTube channel,
you've heard me say this a million times, I'm going
to say it a million and one. Embrace the process.
Take video, take photo of your garden as it goes,
and then look back on that video. Look back on
those photos and you'll see the growth. And that's where
you're going to get your reward. You might not see

(14:30):
a bloom each month, month to month, but you will
see growth. And that is a way to find joy
in the small wins in your garden. It really really helps.
It really helps to document it, and I cannot I
cannot emphasize enough how important it is when you're gardening.
Maybe for me as someone who struggles with patients and

(14:51):
delayed gratification, but it really really does help. So I
want to encourage all of you to think about ways
that you can delay gratification in your garden. Maybe some
ways that you need to slow down a little bit
and let nature decide the timetable rather than ourselves. And
I want to encourage you all to check out Annie's

(15:13):
annuals and if you find a plant you like, absolutely
purchase it from there because they do a great job
shipping plants. And I'm just going to warn you you're
going to get a small four inch plant with just
a couple of leaves on it, and they're doing that
on purpose. Annie's is smart, they know what they're doing
and they're forcing us to wait. But the payoff in

(15:34):
the end is going to be so amazing. So anyway,
I hope you all enjoyed this, and I hope you
all have a chance to get in your garden today.
Thank you so much to my podcast sponsor, Proven Winners.
Visit your local garden center today and look for the
white containers featuring the Proven Winner's logo. There's a reason

(15:55):
they're the number one plant brand that gardeners like me
trust the most. Visit Proven Winners dot com for tips, ideas,
and so much more. Dig Plant Water Repeat is produced
in association with Calarogashark Media. It was written and hosted
by me Janie Santos, with marketing and production assistance from
Courtney Clark. Please consider subscribing and watch us on YouTube

(16:19):
or Follow us on your favorite podcast app of choice
to get alerts on all new episodes, and hey, if
you liked the show, give us a review and hit
those five stars on Apple. Executive producers are Mark Francis,
John McDermott, and Janie Santos. Callarogashark Media