Things to consider when Starting A Garden

 

Gardening is all about putting together many elements that seem random and developing a plan to harness the potential beauty of those elements and creating something that seems miraculous. It does seem truly miraculous when the plants grow and fill a space that seemed so barren before. A successful gardener learns to anticipate the coming changes and set the stage for the miraculous growth. Some elements are not controllable like weather. The challenges and inability to control everything is what makes the successes sweet.

Before you start your garden. Take a look at spots in your yard that are large enough, have access to water, and enough sunlight for the right amount of time each day. This is the most important task you will do as a gardener. The most important consideration is light, most plants require six hours a day of light, but many do well in shade and six hours of full sun will kill them. Also you can get the pH checked through a local garden shop, by the mail or the local extension service. Read the labels on your plants and make sure you have the right plants for the conditions of the spot you have picked. Consider other elements that will make it easier for you later on like composting. Do you have a spot close to your garden that isn’t under large trees but can be accessed from your kitchen so you can get those “golden” kitchen scraps. That is what compost is to a gardener. If your garden is too far away you may loose momentum to get those scraps out to the compost. Maybe the answer is a small bucket like the one I use to fill up throughout the day that has a lid and can be stored under the sink in the kitchen and emptied once a day or so. Sure you can find small, cute, high tech barrel shaped containers to achieve the same purpose as my free plastic ice-cream container but I am too frugal to pay for something that I really don’t want to share with the rest of the world even if it is kind of cute. Remember that you can buy compost in bags or in bulk from local sources so not being able to compost should not stop you plans. Even without a compost pile there are some important food by products that decompose quickly and boost you garden by just adding them in and covering then with dirt such as banana peels, egg shells and coffee grounds. They break down totally in a couple of days and provide nutrients to the soil.

Recently as my body gets older, I find it hard to bend over, so one bed at a time, I am raising the beds up so I won’t have to go down so far. You will make changes as time goes by and you discover your secret garden. At first, pick a few things that you love to eat or that you would love to try or maybe just thing you want to grow. I do not believe that vegetables and other more aesthetic plants should be grown in separate locations. I plant flowers with vegetables, herbs and ornamentals. I group by water needs or my plants will die but the method I use leads to eclectic groupings that I do not see often.

I started gardening with some dirt, water from a hose nearby and some seeds that were 8 packets for a dollar. The books and knowledge came later. I read that the flowers are like an invitation to “garden friendly” bugs that kill the bad bugs and keep plants healthy. Research and be creative. Use color and structure to create your own style of garden. This will give it shape and beauty.

Most places can not be gardened until they thaw but get ready to start the work as soon as the ground thaws. Check your local extension office or your local garden shop for the date to plant in your area. One way to get a jump would be to build a cold frame. This is a wooden structure that can be used to start seedling earlier. Cold frames seem easy to build and if I lived where the weather froze I would use one. This a picture I found on the internet of a traditional cold frame.

I live in California which everyone loves to talk bad about but I start my garden in January before the rains come and I have never used a cold frame. Where you live will determine when you can plant. One good thing about the freezing cold is that cold will kill bugs and disease that are in the soil laying in wait to gobble up your next garden. Instead I really have to make sure that my fruits do not touch the ground and that the soil stays away from the fruit. I achieve this by using a weed block fabric and mulch under each plant and of course I trim the lower branches to prevent the fruit from touching the ground.

When you start gardening you will need certain tools. In the beginning you will need tools to rip up grass and break up the soil about 6-8 inches. For root vegetables you will need to go deeper so read the packet and follow the guidelines they give there. It is possible to over till and break down the structure in the soil too much. Roots like the soil loose so they can push through but do not break up the soil so much it becomes dust. If the roots are happy, the plant is happy too. A flat head shovel, a spade shaped shovel, garden clippers, gloves, sunscreen, a wide brimmed hat, knee pads and a sturdy potato fork. As you learn and practice you will find other things that you just can’t garden without.

Most gardeners shut down their gardens allowing nature to manage on its own for those coldest months of winter when many gardens go fallow. The bite of the cold pushes most people back inside for a few months. Some people do replant a series of fall vegetables which often include “cold” crops. These crops benefit from the colder air. Cold actually makes peas sweeter, beets more tender and carrots that are not woody. “Cold” crops are foods that are grown during the fall and the spring. Many of them are root vegetables that grow in the ground and so they are protected from the cold.

In the winter, you may still be enjoying the bounty of the earth by eating vegetables and fruits that you have canned or as my Momma would say, the stuff you “put back“. Then there’s the people who have a milder climate and can grow something all year round. The most lucky of all gardeners are the gardener that has a green house to work in. They can move stuff inside and start plants earlier. They don’t have to quit for the cold weather.

If you would like to make the transition from summer to fall easier on your self, you plan ahead. Make sure the compost bin is ready to receive all the excess plant material you are going to shed from the garden. Make sure all your excavating tools are nice, clean and sharp. You can pay someone to sharpen them or use your own rotary tool or whet stone. I would begin by pulling any plant material that looks diseased to the trash, do not compost this material as it can spread the disease. After that, you should remove any dead plant material, sometimes just the extra plant material is removed leaving the bones of the garden. Some people enjoy the architecture of this, the poles, cages, and trellises all standing in the winter make a garden seem like it is still a very busy place in the bite of winter, covered with snow these structures seem to have a winter life all their own. They are the garden ghost.

A couple of the most important activities of fall is to plant bulbs for the spring. Many bulbs, tubers, and corns require freezing or at least a good chill to produce in the spring. People who live in the milder climate can refrigerate their bulbs to create the cold they require to flourish in spring. These bulbs produce flowers that look too pretty to be real. Remember to have those beauties growing in your yard in the spring, you have to plant them in autumn.

This information will take you from the beginning to the end of the first year. To get a good start in the garden, you should start in winter by making a plan. The final activity would be clearing away the dead plants and plant bulbs before the ground freezes too hard. Stop one day in June after you have followed my plan and look around, the garden seems so miraculous! You feel like you are a part of something much bigger than you have ever been a part of before. Not only that, but your family will probably begin to eat more vegetables when they grow them in your years.