Well, winter has said adieu, and spring is knocking on your door! That means it’s the perfect time to get a plan in action for this year’s perfect garden. Whether you’re visualizing an abundance of vegetables, a gallery of colorful flowers or another type of outdoor retreat, here are the top ten gardening tips for beginners!
Sagacious gardeners have perhaps by now readied their plan, but there’s still time for rest of us to get prepared. When it comes to gardening, timing is the primary ingredient, so it’s advisable to start early and get the most benefit of the growing season up ahead.
10. Start Seeds Indoors
It all depends on what you want to plant and your surroundings. This advice is useful for now, next year and many years to come! Starting seeds indoors can give a push to the growing season and is also an economical way to start your planting spree. You can take a risk with the starter plant as they are inexpensive to buy. Just grab the essentials around when you want to start and get to it.
9. Ready Your Tools
As the gardening season approaches, it’s the ideal to prepare your tools for the work ahead. As this equipment was hiding in your tool box for quite some time, sharpening the blades can provide them a much-needed refurbishment. Take your trimming shears, shovels, and many other instruments, getting them in shape before you start using them. It’s an excellent way to save time and effort in the future. Don’t forget to give the lawn mower blade some sharpening and a good tune-up.
Bonus Tip: Taking good care of garden tools after every use will keep them in good shape for years to come.
8. Start with a Beginner Project
There’s a chance that you want to start gardening but don’t know where to start. Or, you’ve taken the first step but missed the desired results. Beginner projects, like container gardening, can make you a successful gardener for the first, fifteenth or fiftieth time! Though container gardens demand less effort, they do run into soil issues. So be sure to prepare the soil for the upcoming year.
Also, if you have kids, make sure to involve them! While both educational and fun, this activity can help them appreciate growing things and the effort that goes into producing food, making this one of our favorite gardening tips for beginners.
7. Ready Your Soil
Except for monitoring your plant’s growth or harvesting your veggies, if you have a vegetable garden, purchasing seeds and plants and placing them in the ground is one of the most pleasurable phases of gardening. The manual exertion of breaking up chunks of dirt, scraping and freshening it, is not as exciting as it seems, but it is essential to prepare your soil before you start other tasks.
Preparing soil for gardening is a big project that needs an understanding of basic steps to follow. It’s useful to mix used coffee grounds (the waste from your coffee brewer) into the soil, as it helps prevent slugs and damaging pests, as well as saving acid loving plants. If you’re planting in a fragile area, a piece of cardboard can offer great help in getting rid of weeds.
6. Boost Your Garden with Compost
If you want your garden to have healthy plants, they need a proper diet, and fertilizer is a super-food to them. You can convert leaves, food scraps, lawn clippings and other organic castoffs into nutritious fertilizers and soil improvements for your plants. If you’re looking for quick ways to create healthy compost for your plants, worms can develop fertilizer in much less time than without. If you’re not so comfortable with getting close to a bin of worms, you can create tea compost instead, or mix old food scraps for immediate nutrition! Which of these gardening tips for beginners is your favorite?
After clearing your planting area and eliminating weeds, put a 4-inch layer of your prepared compost to the new beds and blend it well into the soil alongside your fertilizer.
5. Cut Back Bushes, Trees, and Split Perennials
Ideally, winter is the best season to trim your shrubs and trees, before new bloom and warm weather can raise the chances of disease. Even if you haven’t done it, you can do it now, just taking extra care while trimming your trees and shrubs. You should avoid doing any irreparable damage to the tree or plant. It is advisable to crop fruit trees before the buds start to blossom, or else this can stress the tree and result in a tinier plant. Talking about perennials, it’s the best time to divide them before the plants move to take their spring growth.
4. Select New Plants Sensibly
Certain things play a vital role in the healthy development of a plant. While selecting a plant for your garden, you should keep in mind the environment they are going to live in, such as soil, lighting and other weather conditions. Even expert gardeners would have difficulty making sun-kissed plants like ‘daisies’ prosper under a roof. Many plants are simple to harvest. There is a variety of vegetables that you can easily grow in your yard and save money on for the effort; there are plants that don’t demand much water, there are certain plants that grow equally whether they are exposed to the sun or kept in the shade. You can also look out for the plants that work together.
Overall, to pick the correct plant for the right place, put some emphasis on the exposure of sunlight the space gets, the condition of the soil and the hardness of the area. Tech gadgets such as special sensors can help enhance your garden as well.
3. Know the Right Time to Plant and Harvest
The other vital things that you should look for when you’re planting is the time they will take to grow and how large they will grow, especially in the case of the vegetables and fruits. You can prepare a chart for a variety of vegetables for convenience and monitor their growth accordingly. As far as when it comes to other types of plants, stop worrying about everything! Nurseries are there to help you out as they stock plants, especially when they’re flowering, as that’s when they’re exceptionally attractive, so you can just go in and buy your favorite flowers for the garden or special outdoor space.
2. Make a Garden Blueprint
Whether you’re setting up your garden on a four square foot area or you have to work an acre of land, the best start to the perfect garden is with a detailed design. Take help from an expert gardener while creating a garden blueprint, as a well-planned diagram can assist you with the proper landscape, recommending a layout that’s drafted with your selected plants in mind, and any special features you might require.
Having a good space for gardening eases the process to plant, but when you’re dealing with shortness of space, a square foot garden is an ideal layout. Or you can also go for vertical gardens while saving space; they are cost-effective as well.
1. Standardize and Mechanize Your Garden
To end things, gardening is an exciting hobby, but it also demands hard work. Some gardening hacks can make this laborious task a little easier for you. Just to make a point, renovate sprayers so they always supply water to your garden plants in the just right proportions (which can also help you conserve water). Build an automated irrigation system or an automatic water system that will assist you with timely service to the plants. You can count on various high-tech gadgets these days for the garden.
Weigh In: Gardening Tips for Beginners
So there you have it! With these ten great tips, you should be well on your way to start your own garden. Are you already an expert? Share your favorite gardening tips for beginners in the comments!