How Do You Start a Garden For Beginners? – Planting
Want to know how to get started with your own garden? Just wondering where to start? In this article we cover the fundamentals of gardening and offer links to further more detailed information to help you garden successfully with confidence and enjoyment. Ready to dig in and grow with your own garden? Enjoy your garden!
You have many choices for starting your own garden. Many books and magazines, as well as online articles, will give you pointers on which are good plants to start with. Most importantly, you will need to learn how to mix your soil and add organic matter to it so that your plants can feed off that organic matter. Fertilizer should also be added to your soil mixture, because your plants need it. So, here are the fundamentals of starting a garden:
Plant seeds – If you plant seeds, you are starting a garden! And when I say ‘start a garden’, I mean it! Some seeds need to be sowed into the ground before you can plant them, so do your research to determine which ones will produce the best crop for your area. For example, if you are planting seeds for a tomatoes crop, you would plant the seeds with a variety of light and shade tolerant tomatoes, along with other summer and winter vegetables.
Prepare the soil – Once the soil is prepared, add some compost to the soil. Then, you’re ready to mix your seed starting mix and water. No need to over-water the garden once it’s established. Watering the garden every other day is okay; watering should only be done when the soil surface starts to dry out too much.
Dig it out – Start by digging your garden up about four to six inches deep, depending on the size of your garden. Once the ground is dug out, weed out all the weeds and plant the seeds at the bottom of your garden. Tamp down the subsoil well so that nothing falls back into the garden. Tamp down the soil even more to make sure that no weeds have a way to get back into the soil and start growing again.
Watering – Now it’s time to water your garden! First thing in the morning, just give the plants a light soaking mist. Do this twice a day, or as indicated on the seed packages. After the second watering, the soil should dry out enough to hold the water in. When the soil dries out completely, re-pot your garden and put the seedlings in one of your new holes.
Planting – Once your garden has dried out and you are happy with the spacing of your plants, the next step is to plant. The easiest way to plant your transplants is to follow the planting instructions included with the seeds. However, if you are new to planting, there are other ways to go about it as well. One easy way to plant your transplants is to place them in groups of three, five, or ten. However, once you know the best distance that the seeds can grow to, the sky is the limit.
For example, I have some seeds that grow to three and a half feet tall. I place those in a circle of three by three feet, in a circle of five by five feet, and then I place another circle of three by three feet around the last circle. With these small seed packets, I know that I can plant two at a time, have a nice open space in my garden, and plant another set of seeds in the same way, replanting them as they bloom.
