Gardening tips for beginners

Gardening is a great way to spend leisure time and can be adopted as a hobby. It can be intimidating hobby but it is rewarding as well. There are stress reliving effects of gardening according to the Journal of Health Physiology https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105310365577. Apart from that gardening can also bring brightness to your home yard as well as it can keep you to eat healthy vegetables.

Most people have many questions as where to start and how to start gardening, here are a few tips for a newbie to get started.

1.Type of plants

There are certain regulations available for which plants to grow and when to plant them, if you live in USA it is essential to know which hardiness region you live in developed by the USDA. The resolution defines 11 climate zones which define which plants are suitable to grow in your region. The seed packets contain information regarding hardiness zone making it easy to know which plants are suitable to plant which time of the year.

Similarly, there are certain regulations available in each country to know what are the plant flowers and herbs type to plant which part of the year.

2.Type of soil

Get to know the type of soil you have whether the soil is loamy is it clay or sandy.

Loam soil is best as it has great tendency to contain nutrients, the soil is composed of silt, clay, sand and organic matter. It also has the property to retain water and to drain excess water. Loam holds its shape when squeezed and crumbles when squeezed more.

Clay has the tendency to retain more water, as it compacts easily it makes difficult for the plant roots to grow. It is alkaline is poor for draining excess water. It forms a hard-sticky mass when squeezed.

Sand as it suggests has a lower water and nutrient holding capacity. It warms up quickly and erodes. Also, it should be watered more frequently. It crumbles when squeezed.

Apart from the physical appearance the soil should also be tested healthy enough for gardening, a sample of the soil can be sent to a laboratory or it can be tested with home testing kits to know whether the soil is acidic or alkaline in nature. It is important to test the soil for phosphorous, nitrogen and potassium. If your soil has these deficiency then suitable measures should be taken to fix the composition of these elements in the soil.

3.Know where to plant

It may be obvious that it is your garden but you cannot plant every plant in there, take a deep look for the attributes of your garden, For Example, Sunlight time, soil, garden area etc. knowing where to plant and what to plant is essential part of gardening.

Divide your garden into rows. The rows should run across the garden to take advantage of the garden area as well as the sunlight available throughout the year.

Another important thing to note is that all the rows are easily accessible for plant harvesting weeds and watering. For Example, each row has 3 feet of plants with access to them. Make sure that each row can be reached the center until the end easily.

Try to find out the best plants that grows in your native region.

4.Suitable gear

Having suitable tools for gardening needs is essential for garden plants harvesting from start till the end. Investing in tools will not only make gardening easy for you but it will also make it fun and a much more pleasant activity for you. On the other hand, gardening without any tools will make gardening a mess. Upgrade your garden swag by kneepads and Gloves to make gardening easier and more comfortable.

For a startup simple gardening tools can be found at your local gardening shop or they can be ordered online according to the garden needs. Some of the garden tools that can be use full are spade, pruners, garden fork, hand trowel, rake, hoe, hose with adjustable nozzle, watering wand and a wheel barrow.

5.Use of fertilizer

Use of compost, manure, peat moss etc. is an important step to add nutrients and minerals. Fertilizing your soil with peat moss can increase soil nutrients retaining capacity, on the other hand peat moss can be a little expensive as compared to other fertilizers. However, compost is not a fertilizer, compared to fertilizers it has low nutrients as it is made from breakdown of organic matter such as leaves eggshells lawn trimmings etc.

Manure acts as a fertilizer as it is made from animal dung, it adds organic matter to the nutrients of the soil by adding nitrogen that are used by microorganisms in the soil.

6.Watering needs

Allow the plants to get dry after applying water as a dry soil help the roots to grow beneath. Also water the plants before sunset or early in the morning as moist soil and plants at night will allow low evaporation and hydrated plants for the next sunny day. Water evenly around the plant so that the plant does not grow on one side with poorly nutrition soil.

Group plants by how much water they need to save watering time.

7.Getting rid of weeds

A weed can be any unwanted plant you do not want to grow, the weeds can choke out the plants that you have worked hard to grow. Use mulch to ward off weeds,3 inches is all you need to keep away weeds from sprouting. Use of any herbicide is also advisable to get rid of the weeds.