Beginners' Guide to Gardening
Starting a garden can seem intimidating, and by the time the smattering of seasonal veggies on your Insta feed has you drooling, it might be too late to start a garden from scratch. This means that the time for garden planning is now! In this post, I'll give you my best garden planning tips for beginners.
Which plants should I buy?
The types of plants you should buy majorly depends on the size of your garden. Some plants will naturally sprawl out and take up a bunch of space, while others will grow vertically or grow out like small bushes. If you have a small garden, steer clear of sprawling plants like squash, melons and rhubarbs unless the manufacturer says they are bred specifically for small gardens. Instead, buy a combination of small bushy plants and climbing plants. For the climbing plants, like beans and cucumbers, make use of vertical space by investing in trellises.
After narrowing down which size plants you want, you should choose plants that complement one another. Plants complement each other best when they take different sets of nutrients from the soil, discourage each others' pests or attract beneficial bugs. Corn, beans and squash are great companions because they each take and give different nutrients to the soil, while plants like tomatoes and basil are buddies because basil keeps mosquitos and other pests away from tomatoes. Companion planting can help keep your plants and your soil happy and healthy. There are loads of books and websites about companion planting, so put on your research hat and get to searching.
Should I buy seeds or transplants?
So you've decided which size plants you need and found their perfect companions, but now you need to figure out if you should buy seeds or transplants (plants that have already started growing). To answer this question, you need to think about how to get the most bang for your buck. If you want to grow plants that only yield one fruit per seed (think: carrots, beets, onions, broccoli...) then it will almost always be more economical to buy a seed packet than a bunch of transplants. On the other hand, if you want to grow high yield plants like tomatoes, peppers or herbs, transplants might be your best option because it will prevent your packet of a million seeds from going to waste.
Learning how long your plants take to yield can also help you decide whether to buy seeds or transplants. Transplants are great if you're growing plants that take a few years to yield, like berry plants. In this case, buying transplants that have been alive for a few seasons will let you skip the wait time and get yields your first season after planting. If the plants you want are annuals or perennials that don't take years to yield, you might want to buy seeds instead of transplants.
You also need to consider how many people your garden will be feeding. If you have a massive garden intended to feed a whole neighborhood, campus or office full of people, you’ll want to invest in seed packets. Seed packets are cheaper per capita than transplants, so you'll be able to feed more mouths for your money if you buy seeds.
When should I start growing seeds?
If you go the seed route, it's best to plant your seeds in small containers indoors about 6 weeks before the last frost. Once the chance of frost is gone and the plants seem pretty hardy, move them outside and plant them (pst! Gardening Know How has a super helpful chart for plant spacing). For fast-yielding plants that only have one fruit per seed, you can grow them in two rounds: planting some indoors early in the spring and starting some in early summer. Just make sure the plants have enough time to harvest before the first frost. The dates of last and first frosts vary depending on where you live, but the good old Farmer's Almanac can easily hook you up with that info.
When should I plant my transplants?
If you go the transplant route, you can plant those puppies in the ground after the last frost of the season in your area. Similar to seeds, you shouldn't plant too late in the season because you want to make sure your plants have enough time to yield before the first frost. Check the plant’s label or look up its time to harvest online to figure how long your plant will take to yield and compare that to the first frost date for your area. When planting, be sure to give your babies enough room to grow. Like I mentioned earlier, Gardening Know How has a v helpful plant spacing chart.