Tips for the Beginning Gardener
If you know me, then you know I LOVE to garden. I am in my sixth or seventh year of serious gardening, and I’ve learned a lot of lessons since my beginning gardener days.
If you are a beginning gardener, start small.
It’s exciting to start something new! It’s hard to resist all the plants at the nursery that are begging to come home with you. And, it’s easy to go overboard wanting to grow all the things.
If it is your first year of gardening, keep things simple. It takes some time to figure out what will work. I find garden work enjoyable, but it does take up time. Weeding, watering and harvesting are time consuming. It would be awful to spend the time and money setting up a huge garden and then find that you don’t have enough time to tend something so large. Or that watering such a big garden will be too expensive if you have to use city water.
The first year we gardened, we used an established garden area. The next year, we put up more fencing and expanded it by around a dozen rows. A couple years after that, we added another large garden area. Later, we improved our irrigation system. We are thinking about adding fruit trees and berries next year. But, the point is, we didn’t try to do it all in the beginning. The first year, we grew tomatoes and peppers. Small and simple at the start.
Grow foods your family likes to eat.
In my early years of gardening, I sowed an entire row of Swiss chard. We like it well enough, but not enough to have an entire row of it all ready at the same time. Another year, I decided we should have turnips. After growing and harvesting them we found we didn’t like them at all. Looking back, I should have planted less of those things and more of things we really like, like carrots and beets. Doing such large experiments was a waste of my time and resources. However, one year I grew a couple of butternut squash plants to see how we liked them and how they would do in our area. They were wonderful. Then, the next year I planted enough to can a year’s worth of butternut squash. I use it to make butternut squash soup all year round.
So, when you’re a beginning gardener, keep your experiments on the small side and focus on the foods your family really likes. If one year you experiment with something and find that your family loves it, the next year you can grow bunches knowing it will be used. Here’s an article about plants for beginning gardeners.
Learning to garden takes time and practice.
Even seasoned gardeners have years where things don’t go as well as they would like. I’ve tried several times to grow potatoes and except for one year I have always gotten a meager harvest. Last year was the worst of all. I tried to grow them in a raised bed and only got a handful of golfball-sized potatoes. I need to spend more time learning about how to best grow potatoes.
Every year you will learn more. You will try new things and some will work great and some will not work at all. Over time, you will find what works for you and what works in your area. With practice and patience, you can grow a garden that can provide fresh and healthy vegetables for your family and also help your budget.
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