Tips for Starting a New Garden

Starting a garden for the first time or a new garden can be daunting. If you’ve never gardened before, you may not know where to start. If you’ve had a garden before, but it has been awhile and you didn’t feel like it went well the first time around, but want to try again, you might be nervous about jumping in again. Here are some tips to help you get a new garden started without being overwhelmed. 

Grow What You Love and Will Eat! 

When you go plant shopping, or even seed shopping, it can be very tempting and overwhelming with all of the selections of different varieties available. You might get excited that you can actually grow certain things in your garden, or learn of new plants you’ve never heard of before.  However, while it’s great to try new things, for a new garden, stick to things that you actually like to eat. There’s no sense in wasting time and money on resources growing things you don’t like. 

Start with growing things you know you like to eat and slowly introduce new things to your gardening repertoire each season. 

Think About Your Growing Zone

On the subject of plant and seed shopping, just because a nursery or store near you sells it, doesn’t always mean it is suited for your growing region. This is why it is important to know your growing zone, and determine how long your growing season is and make sure that the length of your growing zone aligns with the dates to maturity for each plant you want to grow. 

Think About the Level of Care Required

Like all living things, plants need care, some more than others. Things to consider are watering, pruning, weeding, and pest control. All of these things can take some time, and if you don’t have the proper time to commit, then you may need to scale back on your gardening plans to something you can manage in your timeframe. 

Consider the level of care each plant you want to grow needs and determine if you are able to maintain those plants throughout the season. 

Space

Think about what you have space to grow. Some plants require trellising or have long vines. Some plants need to be spaced out while others can be densely planted together. Consider the space that you have and what you want to grow, and research growth habits so you don’t end up running out of space, or having plants that are crowded where they may end up struggling! 

Start Small 

It can be very tempting to hurry up and have a huge garden especially if you follow gardening accounts on social media and see others with big, bountiful harvests. However, many of those people have been gardening for years and social media often showcases the highlights, and not so much the trials and tribulations to get there. When you start small, you can focus your time and energy on learning what grows well in your garden and what issues you might want to learn how to manage better before expanding your garden. 

Start small and expand your garden once you have an idea of what grows well for you and what you like to grow. 

Feed Your Soil

Your soil needs to be healthy and full of nutrients for your plants to truly thrive. While soil can have beneficial life beneath the surface such as worms, gardeners should be feeding the soil, especially since some plants, such as tomatoes can be heavy feeders and will likely need more than the soil can provide with no amendments. Compost is a great additive to the soil which is teaming with all kinds of microbes to help your soil, and your plants thrive. However, you should also think about what you want to grow, research what you should feed those plants, and make a plan to nourish the soil for those specific plants to thrive – there are many different fertilizers specially made for certain kinds of plants. 

Sun Map Your Garden

Most plants will need six to eight hours of sunlight a day to grow properly, and not every part of your garden will provide that amount of light. Sun mapping is an easy way to track the patterns and hours of sun each part of your garden gets. In the course of a day, you can take photographs or just write down notes on the area you want to plant in. Look at your photographs or notes and see how many hours of sun each area gets. If you have at least six to eight hours of sun, most plants should do just fine. 

Let Go of Your Expectations

Gardening is often full of mistakes and things may not always go as planned. Leave room for errors and know that it’s okay if mistakes are made. A lot of gardening is learning, and trying new things. If something doesn’t work, look at what you did and what you could do differently and make adjustments and try again. It doesn’t mean that you have a “black thumb,” and some things, such as weather, can be out of your control.