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A very good place to start indeed! It’s seems fitting that the inaugural post on my new blog be about one of the first questions I (and probably every other newb gardener) had about gardening.
How do I even get started?
This question was much harder to answer than I ever anticipated. While having the desire to garden in the first place is wonderful, it’s also problematic because without any sense of direction, you’ll want to dive into everything!!! You’ll envision an end result for yourself straight out of Martha Stewart Living (#notsponsored). But without some basic knowledge and tools, this could lead to a very frustrating first attempt at gardening. Which could lead to giving up forever because you’ve disappointed Martha!!! You’re just not cut out for this gardening stuff, right? WRONG!!! You simply need to tame the excitement just a little bit, focus, and develop a manageable game plan.
Before we get into all of that, let me air my personal laundry by sharing my original vision for 2017:
- Windowsill herb garden. Not an outrageous endeavor, but when paired with the list below, time and attention to this project became strained.
- Weed, re-sod, and FULLY landscape my backyard. Nope, never done this before. By myself. How hard (and expensive) could it possible be?
- Plant two fruit trees. For all the jams!
- Full vegetable garden. And surely this bounty will lead to needing to learn canning. Man, I’m going to be so successful.
- Get a couple houseplants. Try not to kill them.
- Decorate some terra cotta pots. Pretty self explanatory.
And as I started to get into my projects, I came up with more:
- George, the willow shrub. I found a shrub to plant. Before my lawn project even started. Go me! Wait, why is he dying?
- Plant up a whiskey barrel container with some pretty plants. I’ll totally make the daily/twice daily trip to water them. I won’t forget!
- Grow zinnias from seed. A sealed packet blew into my yard during a windstorm. Finders keepers! Let’s give those a try.
- Let’s start a salad greens garden. From seed! In these cheap, “self-watering” containers! Using some questionable looking garden soil!
- Grow hollyhocks from seed. They’re going to be so pretty! But where will I put them?
And then as I got even further in my projects and learned a few things (this is when I started getting a bit more practical), I tacked on:
- Start a compost bin. Is it really as easy as everyone says? Let’s try it out.
- Try out cover crops. Learned that my soil sucks. Let’s work on improving it.
- Plant some new porch containers. Ok, this one wasn’t as practical… Hey, it was my birthday!
- Start a beginner gardener blog. Because, despite some failures, I’m having such a blast and want to publicly journal it! (I also think there are others out there who have the gardening bug but, like me, have little clue how to do this and are totally ok with the learn as we go method.)
My vision for how all this hard work would end up is that I would have a lush, beautiful garden in which to entertain my many house guests, serving them dishes full of vegetables straight from the veggie patch. In fact, I’d have so much gorgeous produce that people would be fighting for the chance to take some home. I’d be the ultimate, green-thumbed, domestic goddess!
The reality is that this list was far too ambitious for a newb gardener. As I got into it, I realized I was lacking the tools to accomplish what I set out to do. I kept changing my focus to new projects without finishing the others I started. I was making impulse purchases throughout the summer because I relied on advertisers and social media gardeners to tell me what I should get versus knowing exactly what I needed for myself and why. I also didn’t have enough know-how to tackle most of those projects in the first place. As a result, there were a few failures in the sense that I didn’t achieve the intended outcomes. That said, I learned a TON!!! Because of that, I consider all of those projects a success. Successful failures…
TIPS FOR BEGINNERS: Preparing to plant!
If I could condense my summer growing season into wisdom, go back in time, and get myself to listen to future me, I’d tell past Alice to:
1) Define your growing goals. Seriously, it’s worth it to take the time to explore this question. Spending a little bit of time thinking about this would have helped me avoid random purchases and scrambling for space and plant requirements in my home. Try answering the following questions:
What do you want to grow? Don’t just say plants. 😛 At the end of this journey, what do you want to be left with? A tree, some fruits and veggies, pretty flowers outside your front door or on your balcony, herbs for your kitchen?
How do you want to grow it? Are you looking to start from seed, buy started plants from a garden center, learn to propagate plants from food scraps? Indoor, outdoor, or both? The process may be slightly different depending on method.
How much money do you want to spend? If you have money to burn, your options are going to be limitless. But if you’re on a tight budget like many of us, you might need to get creative or set aside funds before the next growing season.
Write down your answers and revisit them when that gardening excitement energy urges you to shoot for the moon. It’ll be a great visual reminder for you to…
2) Start small. Like, really small. Pick a project or two. Focus your attention on that. Once you have those picked out…
3) Do a bit of research. Just a little bit. Or a lot. Depends on what works best for you. I didn’t do much in-depth research up front, but I did do enough to learn about the basics of getting started on all my projects. (The backyard project was too large, time intensive, and pricey to skimp on the research, so I did an unbelievable amount of reading and Youtube binging for that one. Learned a ton!) And once you get started…
4) Be prepared to adjust your expectations. As a beginner gardener, my predictions about how my projects would progress were mostly wrong. I thought seeds took longer to germinate. After seeing how quickly they sprouted, I thought I’d have a harvestable/plantable plant in no time! I thought plants needed waaaaay more water than they actually do… You get the idea. It will take a bit of time for you to figure out how growing “typically” goes, so open yourself up to the possibility that your assumptions about the process of gardening may be wrong. It’s ok to…
5) Take some time to experiment. Kind of ties into adjusting your expectations. Your first dedicated effort at growing may not pan out. But there is no shame in dedicating your first season to experimentation. Try different growing methods. Play with the elements. Figure out how much neglect plants can stand. If you have some successes, great! But make experimentation and learning your goal. It takes a whole lot of pressure off and will yield some unexpected and wonderful results. And my final bit of advice…
6) Be patient. With yourself, with your plants, with nature; all of it! It takes some time to get in a rhythm and routine of caring for plants. And even when you think you are starting to get a handle on it, nature comes in to screw things up. So be patient, embrace your failures, celebrate your successes. You can do this!!!
So what actually happened to those projects? Well…
- Windowsill herb garden: Failure. Some of the failure was in my control, some of it was not. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. But I have some ideas on how to try and do better for the next time I try indoor herbs.
- Weed, re-sod, and FULLY landscape my backyard. SUCCESS!!! Truly, this was my biggest, most ambitious success, and I couldn’t be prouder of myself and my boyfriend for pulling this off (definitely was not a one person job).
Plant two fruit trees and a full vegetable garden:The backyard project yielded a lot of learning and discovery that meant planting the trees and garden this summer were not a good idea.- Get a couple houseplants. SUCCESS!!! I bought two. They’re not dead. Hoorah!
- Decorate some terra cotta pots: SUCCESS!!! Easy, quick, cheap little craft project.
George prior to the sickening (but you can see the yellow tips forming on the leaves…) - George, the willow shrub: Failure. Oooooh, he is dead. He is so, so, so dead. This is what happens when you don’t pay attention to plant care instructions. Also what happens when you aren’t familiar with the space you’re growing in.
- Plant up a front container with some pretty plants. SUCCESS!!! Then, failure. But then SUCCESS again! I bought some flowers (I believe it’s purple sage and peach verbena) to plant up in front of my house. I thought I killed them by mid-summer, but with a bit of experimentation (I cut off the brown stuff) and watering, they bounced back with a vengeance. In fact, it’s getting frosty here now, and they’ve decided they’re not done blooming!
- Grow zinnias from seed. Failure. Transplanted too many times, put them in the wrong location (not enough sun). Then the bugs had their way with them.
- Let’s start a salad greens garden. Failure. I’m not totally sure what happened here. Maybe planted in too warm of weather?
- Grow hollyhocks from seed. SUCCESS!!! And still in progress. In fact, I’m feeling extra lucky because I’ve read that hollyhocks really don’t like being transplanted because it disturbs the taproot. All but one has survived being transplanted to their new location, and I’m excited to see what they do next spring!
- Start a compost bin. SUCCESS!!! And still in progress. I started this late summer with the goal of having ready compost when I start my vegetable garden next spring. Surprisingly easy!
- Try out cover crops. SUCCESS!!! And still in progress. I was looking for ways to improve the health and texture of my soil, and came across the method of cover cropping. For planting so late in the season, these are going surprisingly well. I look forward to making this a regular part of my garden cycle.
- Plant some new porch containers. Success/failure. I bought a decorative cabbage, some chrysanthemums, purple asters, and fuschia ‘Tom Wests’. I learned that my definition of “full sun” is different that what the tags say. So the flowers fizzled pretty quick (failure). But the cabbage is doing awesome (success)!!! And it’s teaching me where I went wrong trying to plant a salad greens garden in July.
- Start a beginner gardener blog. SUCCESS!!! And thank you so much for reading this far! I’m excited to connect with you to share ideas, failures, and triumphs. I’ll be expanding on some of these projects soon in future posts so stick around.
Please let me know in the comments what your experience is with gardening and what you’re hoping to grow and learn about. I’m so happy to have you here!