Top 10 Tips For Growing Your First Garden

Top Ten Tips for Growing a Successful Garden   

1.       Relax and enjoy the process! Gardening is a “real” activity. There is no rushing how long a radish, or a tomato, or basil take to harvest – so, enjoy the journey.

2.      Make your garden as labor un-intensive as possible. Put traditional newspaper down around your plants and cover with your grass clippings. No weeding and your ground will retain moisture more easily.

3.       Compost. Compost. Compost. Find a local supply if you can’t make enough of your own. If one or more of your plants are struggling add a couple of inches (tall) of compost in a ring a few inches around the center stem and see the miracles it’ll do for you.

4.       Know that you can’t control all the pests in your garden. This includes: snails, slugs, ants, aphids, and any of the other hundred waves of the garden hordes that will from time to time throw themselves on your beautiful vegies and fruit trees. Seek balance in your garden, encourage snakes, frogs, lady bugs, the venerable praying mantis and other predators in  your garden by making sure they have a place to hide, and by not using insecticides that will kill indiscriminately both good and bad insects.

5.       Don’t over water. Don’t over think it. If your plant is wilted water, if it’s not don’t.

6.       Experiment with something new every year. Whether it’s Arctic Kiwis or Kohlrabi pick out at least one thing each year that you’ve never tried.

7.       Share your bounty. There is something universally transcendent about sharing food with someone who may be hungry. It feels amazing to drop off food you grew at a food bank or pantry.

8.       Share what you know and take time to learn from others. If you really want to improve as a gardener join a community garden. I learned so much from a group of older ladies who ran a community garden. And you get to be another part of #7!

9.       If you have kids get them involved in your garden! Pay them a nickel each to pluck the yellow flower from dandelions. Show them how the compost pile works. Share that first fully ripe strawberry with them and see how easy it is to get them outside.

10.   Cook what you grow! This again is where you get to stretch yourself. I saw the most wonderful recipe on Rachel Ray for Swiss Chard Au Gratin. Never in a million years would I have thought of that. Google, Bing, etc. what you have with the word recipe after it and try something new!