7 Beginner Gardening Tips Every Newbie Gardener Should Know About

The benefits of the home garden are many. As well as the near-infinite number of plants you can grow, gardening mixes relaxation with exercise.

The home garden adds beauty to your landscape, value to your property, and increases your quality of life. Flowers offer aesthetic value and fruit and/or vegetable gardens provide the additional benefit of adding money to your pocket by cutting your food costs.

The final benefit of a successful garden is the satisfaction of true accomplishment. Even if you’re a beginner, you can experience the satisfaction of successful gardening if you start with a good garden plan and the right gardening tools.

Start Small

The beginning garden is an experiment. You’ll find out which plants you enjoy growing and how much you’ll reap from what you sow.

In addition, first-year gardens are more work than second and third-year gardens.

Generally, to plant a first-year garden you’ll need to till the new ground.

Gardening in large, previously unplanted areas can be overwhelming. Even if you add garden soil, you’ll spend more time weeding the first-year garden than an established plot. A twenty to thirty square foot area is sufficient to let you experience the satisfaction of a successful harvest with a minimum of work.

Know your plants before you plant them.

You’ll need to choose plants for your new garden according to the soil that best suits them and the light they need to grow.

Time is also a variable factor in gardening. As well as varying in the time from planting to harvest, cultivars have different care requirements while they’re growing. Some require little care other than an occasional weeding and others require daily care for successful growing.

Know what you can expect to reap before you sow. Vegetables like carrots and onions usually grow one plant per stem, while you may get a bucket full of potatoes from a single hill, depending on the variety you plant.

Green beans are prolific after bloom as are many vining plants such as cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkins. Green beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, and potatoes are all easy-to-grow plants in the beginning vegetable garden.

Easy grow flowers include petunias, marigolds, violets, and of course, flower bulbs are little growth factories that require little effort from your green thumb after planting.

After you’ve chosen plants to grow, the next part of planning your garden is deciding how you’ll grow them.

Seed or Transplants?

You can grow plants either from transplants or from seed. Many seed packets contain more seeds than you’ll need for your first garden, yet a packet of seeds is less expensive than most transplants and many plants are as easy and in some cases easier to start from seed.

However, because most seeds are relatively inexpensive, you lose little if you don’t plant a complete packet of seed. Remember that you are gardening for enjoyment as well as a successful harvest.

You’ll have a better gardening experience if you keep rows small and plant a variety of plants than if you limit your garden space to only one or two types of plants.

When you’ve made your planting decisions, outline your garden plan on paper. A paper gardening plan helps keep spring planting fever at bay when you actually plant your beginning garden! After you’ve completed your garden plan, assemble the tools you’ll need to plant your garden.

Seven Basic Garden Tips

1. Space: The first thing in growing plants is deciding where to put them. Choose from a variety of pots in different types and sizes, window boxes, greenhouses, beds, borders, and of course the garden plot. Space for plants also means giving them the room they need to grow. Some plants do well bunched closely together, while others, like large trees, may require several feet of room between them.
2. Nutrition. Plants get the nutrients they need mainly from their growing medium. Today’s gardeners can opt for many different mediums and methods of growing plants. When growing plants outdoors, a soil test provides you with information on the composition of your soil. Depending on the type of plant you want to grow, you may need to “amend” your soil to provide your plants with necessary drainage, moisture retention, and organic compounds.NPK Fertilizers contain nitrogen (N), potassium (P), and potash (K). Each component serves a purpose.
   • (N) Nitrogen: promotes blade growth, forms proteins and chlorophyll (the green stuff)
   • (P) Phosphorus: helps root, flower, and fruit development
   • (K) Potassium: Helps stems and roots grow and helps your plants turn protein into nutrients (photosynthesis)

   However, fertilizers are a plant supplement and not the main meal! Real nutrition for soil-grown plants comes from soil rich with organic compounds.

   Potted plants grow in various potting mixtures depending on the cultivars and the method used to grow them. Along with soil-based and part soil growing mediums, some plants grow without soil! Hydroponic, aeroponic, and aquaponic gardening are three forms of soil-less gardening.

3. Temperature. Growing plants at the right temperatures are essential for successful gardening. Winter hardy plants that do well in temperate areas frequently won’t tolerate warm climates. Conversely, tropical plants typically won’t withstand frost and need to live indoors during cold northern winters. Houseplants, as well, also have maximum and minimum temperature requirements.
4. Light. Light is the most important factor in plant growth. During photosynthesis, plants use light to collect carbon dioxide molecules and convert them into sugar, an energy-producing nutrient for plants. Outdoor light classifications may be from shade to full sun, with varying degrees of light tolerances, such as “part shade” or “part sun”, in between. Indoor classifications are often termed as “bright light”, “bright-filtered light”, “indirect light”, and “low light”.
5. Water. Of course, you’ll need to water your plants. However, when and how much vary from variety to variety of plants. Some plants require constantly moist soil, while others like a good drink, but won’t tolerate wet feet and some plants, like cacti, need very little water at all!
6. Air. Plants breathe just like people do and like people, need fresh clean air. However, in addition to the air above ground, many plants “breath” through the soil as well.
7. Time. Ecclesiastes says it best. “There’s a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted”.As well as when to plant and when to pluck, time is also important for knowing when to divide certain cultivars like tulips, when to prune shrubs, when to bring tender plants indoors, and when to set them outside.