One of the most profitable things to do is opening your own garden. It doesn’t matter whether you are planning to grow vegetables or pretty flowers, you will still benefit from having a garden. If you start your planning early during Winter, note that Spring is the best time to start digging and planting. Farmers and nursery workers spent the majority of summer to weed, water, and observe the growth of the small plants. Fall is your best bet if you are thinking of planting perennials, bulbs, shrubs, and trees. Read on to learn more on to start a garden and ensure it yields in all the seasons.
- Start Thinking
Do you want a floral garden? Or a vegetable or herb one? What types of plants will you cultivate? Do you like annuals with vibrant flowers that need replanting every year? Or then again, do you lean toward perennials that bloom for short period, but do not require replanting yearly? You can blend any of the abovementioned things to make your garden. Only one piece of advice: Start Small. It is best to have a bit of success than grand failure.
- Select a Patch
Most flowers and vegetables need around six hours of full sun daily. Sit in your picked spot for a day and study how the sun moves over the space. It may get less to no sun than you might suspect. In any case, don’t give up if your patch has too much sun; numerous plants love the sun. Check the tags for the plants or ask the florist at your neighborhood nursery to discover the amount of sun that the plant needs. Start your garden in an area where you see daily — in your backyard, close to the entryway, by the kitchen’s window. Also, make sure that the plot is close enough to a water source, so you won’t need to drag the hose over some distance.
- Till the Ground
Dispose of the grass growing on the patch you intend to plant. For brisk outcomes, uproot it, however, it is simpler to use newspaper to smother it. Just place about five layers of newspaper on the grass; make that 10 layers if there is St. Augustine or Bermuda grass on your lawn. Shovel three inches of potting soil mix or fertilizer on the paper. Wait for about 16 weeks for the paper and manure to decay. If there are too many weeds on the lawn or you prefer not to wait, just use a hand fork or shovel to dig out the grass.
- Boost the nutrients in the Soil
You need to constantly improve the soil. The solution is pretty basic: organic matter. Make a potent mix by allowing a layer (3 inches) of old manure, dry grass, dead leaves, and fertilizer to decay. Then proceed to till that into the soil in order to enrich it. You can also apply this matter mix on topsoil if you don’t want to dig the soil. This method might take some months to enrich the soil, but the nutrients will eventually move to the soil underneath. To get familiar with your soil, contact a testing lab or your cooperative extension office. They will tell you about the quantity of garden soil to send, and the best period to obtain the samples. It normally takes 14 days before you get the results from them. This will reveal what your soil has, what it doesn’t and how to fix the soil.
- To till or not
Tilling the soil makes it less compact – this will allow the roots to grow through more easily. But, you should only do tilling when the soil is dry to crumble when dropped and wet enough to become a loose ball in your clench hand. Utilize a hand fork or spade to delicately mix the topsoil and organic matter. It is recommended to till the soil once a year during spring prior to planting, especially if you are growing annual flowers or vegetables.
- Select Plants to Grow
A few people search nurseries inventories for quite a long time; a few people go to the community nursery and purchase what they like. Both strategies are effective, so long you pick plants that can grow in your soil, climate, and the hours of sunlight. You can buy exotic and rare plants online. The types of plants that beginners can easily grow includes:
- Vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce.
- Yearly: zinnias, sunflowers, calendula, geraniums, impatiens, marigolds, and cosmos.
- Perennials: daylilies, pansies, phlox, purple coneflowers, lamb’s-ears, and Russian sage
- Plant Them
A few plants, for example, kale and pansies are cold-tolerant, so they can be planted in late winter or autumn. Most annual flowers and tomatoes can’t withstand much cold, so only plant them when winter is completely gone. You can plant perennial plants in the middle of autumn and spring. You can easily sow some plants from seeds, so you can directly plant the seeds in the garden bed. Make sure to check the seed pack for details on the time to plant, in what depth in the soil, and the spacing between the seeds. In case you’re a bold beginner, you can sow your seeds ahead of growing season by germinating the seeds inside before the end of winter. Purchase trays or containers and soil blends made particularly for seedlings at the community nursery or florist store. Adhere to the directions on the seed packet, and keep the trays beside a window or under artificial lights on the off chance that you don’t have space by your window. Moisten the seedlings, but do not make them wet or they might decay. To bypass all this seedling hassle, purchase transplants or set plants, which are young plants that you can place directly in a dug hole on your garden bed.
- Water
You should not allow seedlings to completely lose moisture, so water them every day while they are little. Decrease as the plants get bigger. New transplants additionally need extra watering — once in two days or thereabouts — until their root system is well developed. From that point onward, the frequency of watering will depend on your soil, humidity, and the amount of rainfall. Most times, when plants droop under the sun, it means they need moisture. Water them deeply and gradually, so the soil absorbs the water as opposed to it flowing off to other areas. Water the plant early in the morning in order to limit water loss.
- Mulch
Spread a few inches of mulch on the soil so as to reduce water loss and weed growth. There is a wide range of mulch for sale i.e. bark chips, cocoa pods, pine needles. Use a mulch that will decay within a few months in a bed of annuals or vegetable garden. Utilize mulch that decays slower in a bed of perennials.
- Stay Consistent
Your dream garden will soon become a reality. Continue watering when required, and uproot weeds early. During the season, apply dry compost on the soil.
