Whether you’re growing plants for the first time or working with a new piece of land, starting a garden can be intimidating! Do you plant flowers or veggies? When do you plant them? How do you set up your space to encourage healthy plants? While there are endless questions and available options, breaking this task down into a few different steps can make it more manageable and lessen any sense of overwhelm.
We’ll explain how to start a garden so you can tackle the process with confidence. From prepping your ground to selecting plants, we’ll share gardening tips that make growing plants a positive experience. Once you have a handle on how to start a garden, you’ll be able to enjoy the therapeutic, aesthetic, and delicious benefits that gardening provides.
Survey Your Space
The first step in starting a new garden is determining what type of space you’re working with. Some factors to look at include light, soil type, and soil moisture, since each of these elements impacts which plants will thrive in the area. While you can slightly alter the soil with the help of amendments, it’s difficult to turn a wet, shady backyard into a sunny meadow.
You should also take note of how large of a space you’re working with. While you don’t need to turn the entire space into a garden, it’s helpful to know the maximum amount of space available for plants.
Gardening 101 Tip: Consider Raised Beds
If you’re hoping to plant a garden but are working with soil that’s rocky, heavy in clay, or contaminated with heavy metals, consider raised beds. You can build raised beds yourself or purchase pre-built beds of varying sizes. Once your beds are ready, you can fill them with a soil blend that’s formulated to grow healthy pants.
Determine What to Plant
Once you know how big of a space you want to commit to a garden, it’s time to figure out what you want to plant! Start by deciding if you’d like to grow flowers, vegetables, herbs, fruits, or some combination of these different types of plants.
There are a few gardening tips when it comes to choosing plants. First, pay attention to the time of year. Some plants like tomatoes and sunflowers thrive during the long, hot days of summer, but others suffer with this heat. Veggies like lettuce and kale and flowers like snapdragons and ranunculus grow best in the cool weather present in the spring and fall.
You should also know the difference between annual, biennial, and perennial plants. Annuals go from seed to flower-producing plants all in a single growing season and need to be replanted each year. Some examples of annuals include lettuce, zinnias, cosmos, tomatoes, and calendula. Perennials take multiple years to produce flowers and remain in the garden for multiple years. Blueberries, coneflowers, asparagus, and apples are all perennials. Biennials produce vegetative growth in their first year, then flower and die in their second year. Hollyhocks and parsley are biennials.
Clear the Ground
Once you’ve figured out the size of your garden and where you’d like it to go, it’s time to clear the ground. First, remove any unwanted plants. If you’re starting with a green lawn, you have a few options for removing the grass. One possibility is to grab a shovel and get to work digging up the green leaves and their accompanying roots.
If you prefer to skip the manual labor and have a bit of time to work with, you can lay a UV-resistant tarp or piece of cardboard on the ground. After about a month or two on the ground, the material will kill the grass and leave you with a blank slate.
If your future garden area has woody or vining plants, make sure to thoroughly remove them before adding new plants. Persistent weeds like Johnsongrass, bindweed, and thistle can become never-ending challenges if you fail to remove them at the beginning of your garden-building process. You should also take a minute to remove any large rocks in the top six inches of soil—there’s no need to sift through the soil but remove any rocks that your shovel hits.
Amend the Soil as Necessary
After you’ve cleared the ground of any old plants and rocks, it’s time to take a look at your soil. If you want to grow your plants directly in the ground, consider taking a soil sample and submitting it to a local soil lab. The results will tell you important information such as soil pH and soil nutrient levels. You can then use this information to add the necessary fertilizers and adjust the pH with lime and sulfur.
If you’d like to skip a soil test, consider adding a few inches of rich, finished compost to improve the soil makeup. Compost will add a boost of organic matter and nutrients, which helps improve aeration and drainage as well as plant nutrient availability. You can also add fertilizer that is designed for the type of plants you’re growing. For example, choose a flowering fertilizer for flowering plants and a fruit tree fertilizer for apple and peach trees.
Lay Out Your Garden
Once you have a list of plants you’d like to add and your garden area is ready to receive plants, take a moment to sketch out your garden layout. While it doesn’t have to be precise, putting your garden on paper will make the planting process much easier. Consider plant light needs, space requirements, and water needs when you’re designing the garden. Start by making sure that each plant will receive the proper type of light, and remember that tall plants often provide shade to smalle plants. You can then consider plant moisture needs— grouping plants with similar moisture needs makes watering easier.
Don’t forget that you can create multiple garden zones. For example, you may want to group flowering perennials near the front of your home and devote a backyard raised bed to vegetables. And don’t forget that you can plant more than one crop in a single area! For example, you can grow lettuce or radishes in your raised bed during the spring and then plant sunflowers or tomatoes after you harvest your spring crop.
Add Your Plants
With your garden layout in hand, it’s time to add your plants! Whether you want to grow some of the best garden flowers or some fresh veggies, you have three main options when it comes time to plant. You can direct sow seeds in your garden, start seeds indoors and plant the resulting seedlings in your garden, or purchase seedlings from a garden center or nursery. It’s fine to choose one method or mix and match.
Regardless of whether you plant seeds or transplants, make sure to keep plant spacing in mind. Planting too close together leads to crowded plants, which corresponds with a higher likelihood of disease and nutrient deficiency. On the other hand, planting too far apart creates wasted space and allows weeds to thrive. If you’re not sure of the correct plant spacing, check on your seed packet or plant tag.
Aim to plant in the early morning or evening when the sun is less intense. This will give the plants time to adjust to their new home without a lot of stress. After you plant, make sure to thoroughly water both seeds and seedlings.
Keep Up with Weeding
When you think about how to start a garden, you may only think about preparing the ground and adding your plants. But the work continues after you’ve tucked your plants into the garden! One key aspect of garden maintenance is weed control. If you fail to keep up with growing weeds, your once beautiful garden may be overtaken by unwanted plants.
Mulching is one way to make weeding easier. Spreading a layer of wood chips, straw, or leaf mulch over the blank spots in your garden helps prevent weed seeds from germinating and smothers weed seedlings. Plus, it helps retain moisture.
Regardless of if you mulch your garden, check for weeds at least once a week. Pulling small weeds is a manageable task and prevents you from dealing with larger weeds later on.
Water Regularly
Another key part of keeping your plants happy is watering them regularly! Depending on the temperature, soil type, and plant type, you can expect to water your plant anywhere from every day to every week. In general, you’ll need to water young seedlings more than mature plants. When you water, aim for deep and infrequent watering rather than frequent and shallow watering.
Multiple watering methods work well. You can simply use a hose or watering can to water the base of your plants. Or, you can install a soaker hose or drip irrigation system and set it up on a timer.
Start Your Garden with Confidence
Now that you know how to start a garden, it’s time to make your plant growing dreams come true! Whether you’d like to fill your side yard with cutting flowers or make your backyard an edible oasis, following the aforementioned steps will help you get off to a great start. If you need a bit of inspiration to help you along the way, check out some of the best gardening quotes and plan a visit to a local botanical garden.
If you’d like to add even more plants to your life, we’ve got you covered. We offer a variety of plants for delivery that are perfect for sprucing up your patio or brightening a friend’s day. And don’t forget flowers!
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