Gardening is always a pleasure for those who make it a habit. It is a way of keeping in touch with nature. Taking care of plants every day can help you to embrace yourself. Some people take gardening and planting as a hobby. Gardening takes a lot of effort to grow plants from seeds. If you want to start gardening as a beginner, then you are in the right place.
Starting a garden and growing plants is pretty easy. It is very enchanting to watch seeds growing into little plants in your garden. Watering and taking good care will benefit you with healthy fruits and vegetables. Gardening is a wonderful practice that can serve your brake fast or supper. Wouldn’t you be happy to have healthy food from your own garden?
There are 10 simple steps to follow as a beginner to start gardening. Let’s take you to the discussion.
Key Takeaways
- Select a suitable garden type and location to start. Choose the type according to your location.
- A good season to start gardening.
- 10 easy steps to become a gardener. Be aware of the things that can ruin your garden.
- A few problems and solutions that a beginner can face.
Types of Gardening for Beginners
Before starting gardening, you need to make a plan for it. Choose a suitable type of gardening map depending on your space and ability to take care. There are lots of gardening patterns you can adopt.
Vegetable Garden
If there is enough space in your backyard or front yard, you may prepare a vegetable garden. This type of gardening needs a big space as the plants can grow quickly. Another type is woodland gardening. This one needs a bigger space to grow woodlanders like magnolia, Pieris, and maple trees. You can also grow common vegetable plants like lettuce, green beans, radishes, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, beets, carrots, and so on.
Flower Garden
For a mid-range plot, you can choose to start a flower garden. It is also called the butterfly garden as the flowers will attract butterflies. Making a flower garden will also give you the benefits of a scented aroma around your house. It will be an overwhelming welcome to the guests. There are a few plants you must try in your flower garden:
- Impatiens.
- Pansy.
- Petunia.
- Marigold.
- Rose.
- Moss rose.
- Four O’clock.
- Peony.
Water Garden
Water gardening is one of the oldest forms of gardening. If you have a pond, you can grow flower plants and many beautiful plants in the surrounding areas. To ground cover in gardens, Creeping Jenny makes excellent use in water gardening applications. Growing nearly two inches in height that makes a great filler to soften the edges of the rocks with its bright leaves creating a vivid contrast against the cool gray of wet stone. You can also try:
- Pickerel Plant
- Horsetail Reed
- Taro Pond Plants
- Cardinal Flower
- Water Lettuce
- Mosaic Pond Plant
- Blue Iris
For smaller spaces, there is a few garden plan you may apply.
Indoor Garden
Indoor gardens are perfect for beginners. A wise choice to have a refreshing taste of nature within the walls of your home. This adds major decoration to your house. An aesthetic points to your home interiors. Growing the right type of plants will increase oxygen levels within your house.
Since plants can purify the atmosphere and give out oxygen, you can have clean air to breathe in full of oxygen. While picking plants for your indoor garden, ensure you get those with the least maintenance.
In indoor gardening, plants get less sunlight. This makes them easy to care for and easy to maintain. You must also be careful as to how much water you put in. Too much water can be harmful to plants.
Rooftop Garden
Using your roof to start gardening is a wonderful idea. Besides an indoor garden, a rooftop garden can provide enough sunlight to plants. This type of gardening is beginner friendly. Making a garden on the roof will help nature in every aspect.
There are many benefits of rooftop gardening. This type of gardening can be taken care of single-handedly. There will be less chance to disturb your garden. Birds can find shelter and food in your garden. All kinds of gardening plants can be planted.
A Good Season to Start Gardening
An important thing to consider before starting gardening is the season. As we all know that there are 6 seasons to count. But for gardening, there are only 4 seasons to consider. Those are summer, winter, spring, and autumn.
Summer is not a very friendly season for growing plants from seeds. In some geographical areas, summer seasons can be very hot to bear. The heat wave can be brutal and unhealthy for both animals and plants. In the summertime, rain is scarce. So, except for a few vegetables, you can’t grow anything. Winter is a very harsh time to survive and grow plants.
The spring season is considered good for starting a garden in many areas. Autumn is the best time to grow plants. This season is the worthiest season to start gardening as it is not too cold nor too hot. You can plant any seeds and they will grow as plants and give you the expected results.
10 Steps for Beginners to Start Gardening
To start gardening, you need to be careful of these 10 things to make a beautiful garden and grow plants successfully.
1. Selecting Gardening Type
As per the earlier discussion, you have to select a type of garden first. This decision is very important as it is the base of your next steps. Making a wrong decision will fail you in gardening. So, choose the right one for your interest.
2. Selecting Plant
Choose the plants you want to grow according to your garden type. It can be flower plants for a butterfly garden or vegetable plants for vegetable gardening. If you like fruits for everyday breakfast, then select fruit plants. Do not plant anything that you don’t have a reason for it. Keep it simple to work things out easily.
Also, make sure the plant you are about to grow is suited for your area. Try to figure out which types of fruits and vegetables can grow well.
3. Selecting Gardening Place & Size
You might have enough space around your house. But you can’t just plant seeds everywhere. Choosing the right place and size for your garden is very important. It decides your garden’s shape and protects it from any harm by the fencing around it. The size should be large enough to organize plants when they grow up.
Select a place where you can stand strong. The place should be fertilized enough to grow plants. There are many backyard unused places where you can’t do anything. Some places have water logging all time. So be aware of all the drawbacks before you choose a place and size for gardening.
4. Selecting Gardening Tools
The right tools make gardening a pleasure instead of boring. You should not use a kitchen knife to cut up raw carrots, and you should not use dull or flimsy tools to work in your garden. Basic gardening tools are:
- Gloves
- Pruning Shears
- Loppers
- Garden Fork
- Garden Rake
- Hand Trowel
- Spade
- Rake
- Hose with Adjustable Nozzle
- Watering wand
- Watering can
These are the basic tools that you need to start gardening. You can do way much gardening with all these. Eventually, you will understand what else you know.
5. Soil Testing
Before you start making garden beds or planting, you need to test your garden soil. It is very important to know what metafiles your soil contains. So that, you can be sure how your gardening is going to be.
Is the soil acidic or alkaline? What pH level does it have? Does it have sand, clay, silt, and rocks inside it? Is there a risk of soil pollution from nearby structures, roadways, or other sources? Does it have a good amount of core nutrients?
Some of these can be determined just by looking at the soil. Others may require normal soil tests or lab tests. For example, lead contamination from an old house or nearby roadways with heavy traffic is a problem in some areas. You can’t determine this without lab tests.
6. Soil Fertilization
Soil needs to be fertilized in order to grow crops. You can’t just grow plants in your backyard. It needs to be cultivated. Need to cut it up in chunks and repurpose it, till it is in, or lay down wet newspaper or cardboard to smother it and build a bed on top. Preparing in the fall is best, but don’t let that stop you from starting in spring.
Most plants prefer deep, water-passing, and fertile soil rich in organic elements. Plant roots need good garden soil to produce good vegetables and fruit. You may add some fertilizer to make the soil healthy from the outside.
7. Picking Right Seeds or Transplants
Picking up the right seed for your garden after the soil test will help you to grow plants tension free. If you want to grow specific varieties like heirlooms, you will probably need to grow your own transplants from seed.
To do that, you need pots that are large enough for the plant. Big plants in small pots are root bound and suffer from transplant shock when planted in the garden. Watch for stress marks such as insect damage or yellow leaves.
8. Watering System
A good watering system is important for gardening. Plants can’t grow very well without water. A small garden needs around 3 to 5 buckets of water every 2 days a week. Plants need water as many animals do when thirsty.
Also, watering too much will cause a bad effect on them. Water your garden when the soil gets hard and looks faded. Spray water all over the plants also. Do not pour water directly.
9. Sunlight Control
Sunlight is very crucial for plants. Without sunlight, the plants will be dead. Make sure your garden location gets enough sunlight. Pay attention to how sunlight plays through your garden before choosing a spot for your garden.
Also, too much heat from the sunshine can damage little plants. So make a shade for them as a safe house. Most vegetable, fruit, and flower plants need around 6 hours of sunlight a day.
10. Daily Work Routine
Keep your mindset to spend time in your garden daily basis. You need to water the flowers and vegetables everyday morning. Consider these plants as babies. Pay attention to every detail to find out how to treat them.
To make those seeds into corps and harvest, you need to work hard and give your full attention. It will take a good amount of your time. In the end, you would get what you deserve.
Need Some Awareness as a Beginner
As a beginner, you need to be aware of a few things that can damage your lovely garden instantly. Let’s see what those are and how to protect your garden from them.
1. Fertilizer
Using fertilizer is necessary to keep your plants safe from insects. But to do that, you need to have knowledge of fertilizing plants. Using too much fertilizer can harm or even kill your plants instantly. So, it is better, you take suggestions from an expert for that.
2. Pests & Insects
To keep your garden safe from pests and insects, use fertilizer and pest control ingredients. Better to call your local pest control to do the job for you.
3. Watering
Too much watering can ruin your plant’s growth. Water in a consistent way to maintain their growth. Make sure they get water every day. Not watering them at all can cause your garden to become a death zone.
4. Animals
Keep your garden safe from wild animals. Make a fence around it and make it strong. Protect new plants with dedicated protection. Find out which animal is popular in your area for ruining gardens. Then take steps against that.
5. Pets
Your pets can also destroy your lovely garden not knowing its value of it. You do not even have anything to say as it is your fault. So, before that happens, take steps. Train your pet to understand it. Do not let them get inside. Make a barrier.
Few Issues Faced by Beginning Gardeners
There are a few issues that beginner face very often. Here are some solutions that can help:
- One common problem is that seeds do not grow at all. This happens as the seeds are damp or the soil is unhealthy for them. This is called “Insufficient Soil Preparation”. That means, if that ever happens, it is because you did not cultivate before planting seeds.
To solve that, use soil test kits and pH detectors to help determine the quality. Depending on the desired pH level of the soil, limestone may be necessary to raise it, while sulfur can be used to lower it.
Another reason for that is insufficient sunlight. Follow the instructions discussed to solve it.
- Pale yellow or green leaves, dropped leaves, small leaves, extreme stem growth.
These are very common issues with plants. Fear not, this is nothing serious. You can easily fix that.
- To fix pale yellow or green leaves, you need to understand why that happens. This problem happens just because of overwatered plants. To solve it, maintain the watering system in a restricted way.
- Dropped leaves happen as the soil is very dry or wet. Most of the cases happen because the soil is dry. You may see that very often in the winter season. To avoid that, water your plants very often.
Small leaves and extreme stem growth are caused by nutrient deficiencies and heat or water stress. This case is very rare. To avoid that, add fertilizer and natural soil elements with the help of an expert.
FAQs
Eight easy-to-grow edibles that show just how simple is to growing and enjoying your own fruits and vegetables can be:
Bell Peppers
Blackberries and Raspberries
Cabbage
Cucumbers
Garlic
Strawberries
Tomatoes
Zucchini and Squash
5 Super Speedy Vegetables that can grow in a few days.
Radishes. Sowing to harvest: 25 days. Radish is one of the fastest vegetables. Takes just three to four weeks to reach harvest time.
Salad leaves. Sowing to harvest: 21 days.
Bush beans. Sowing to harvest: 60 days.
Carrots. Sowing to harvest: 50 days
Spinach. Sowing to harvest: 30 days.
Apricot is one of the largest harvested fruit. Even a single tree is enough to grow in the garden as it can produce self-pollinated fruit. This tree grows faster, but it takes 2 years to harvest fruit. The sweetness tastes best when fresh.
The fastest fruits to grow are strawberries, blackberries, and autumn-fruiting raspberries. These plants can produce a crop of berries in the first year after planting.
The pineapple plant is the one that provides fruit only once time at a year. On average, each pineapple plant harvests about three fruits in its lifetime, grown one at a time.
Final Thoughts
Gardening is a very reasonable way to pass your time. It would be best if you make it your hobby. As a beginner, you must maintain the things that are discussed in this article. 10 simple steps can effectively help you to become a good gardener and solve gardening problems as well. You also need to be aware of those things that can ruin your garden without even knowing the value of it.
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