I’ve been gardening a long time, but I still learn something new every single season.

The 2010 gardening season is just about over for me. Well, as soon as I pick the last green tomatoes, pull up the plants, clean up the garden bed, amend the soil, stack the containers, clean and store the fountain, and plant the garlic.

All the while I’ll be contemplating how this year’s garden grew and what lessons I learned from it. My top gardening lesson for 2010 is “don’t give up too soon.”

This lesson came by way of two plants–a paprika pepper plant grown in a container on the patio and a butterfly bush in the perennial garden.

The Paprika Plant

I had a heck of a time with my seed starting this year, mostly because I got a late start and then I thought I could get by with old grow bulbs. (Those could be two more good lessons for me.)

What  gardening lessons do you take away from the 2009 season? Share your experience here for a chance to win a CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator.

Fall has definitely fallen around here and I’d like to recapture some of those nice, warm feelings from summer.

Want to play along? You could win a CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator–my new favorite gardening tool.

Thinking back to this year’s gardening season I recall it certainly had its ups and downs.

Some gardens took too long to come up and others were beaten down by hail.

Despite these challenges, I’m sure every gardener learned something from his or her 2009 gardening experience.

What gardening lesson did you learn this year?

Think about your 2009 garden…

• Did you try a new plant that performed well?
• Find a new planting or maintenance method that saved time or effort?
• Did you beat Mother Nature at her own game?