Arricca Elin Sansone at OprahMag.com has a great list of 10 essential gardening tips for beginners.
1. Make sure to prepare your garden before spring arrives.This includes removing dead leaves and sticks as well as pruning.
2. Be sure to understand how your geographic region affects your growing season and what plants are viable.
3. Start with a small garden and then expand to give yourself a better chance of success.
4. Ensure your soil is high-quality. If it’s not, consider using compost to add nutrients back into the soil.
5. Vegetables often grow very well in pots so you don’t even need a full garden. Give it a try!
6. Plant flowers to attract bees and butterflies which help pollinate your plants. Your flowers will also “provide habitat for our shrinking pollinator populations.”
7. Know the “basic gardening techniques” – plants need food (nutrients), water, and sun. Use organic fertilizer to feed, a watering can or hose for hydration, and be sure your plants are getting enough sunshine each day.
8. Don’t forget to weed your garden! Weeds “compete for water and nutrients” and we want the plants we planted ourselves to be getting as much of those as possible.
9. Keep notes – record what you plant, how you took care of them, and how they performed in your garden. This will make it easier for you to know what to plant in the future or what you may want to do differently next year.
10. Shut down your garden when fall approaches. Clean up your garden and tools, then add a little compost “over the top of your vegetable garden to decompose over the winter.”
Bonus Tip: Try, try, and try again. Some of your plants will die at one point or another. It happens to all of us! Don’t be discouraged and learn from it. You’ll get better with more experience. Part of the fun of gardening is experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t work for your garden.
Let us know in the comments what you thought of these tips – we thought they were fantastic!
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