Gardening is and should be very simple, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. I have had gardens so many climate zones I can barely keep track. I have had many failed gardens and many plants that failed me (I’m blaming the plants). I’ve learned a lot, so here’s what I’d do if I were starting a brand new garden this year:
1. Buy a couple of pots or build one medium-sized box.
Pots are $$$, especially the nice beautiful ones you see in those Sunset magazine photo shoots and they rarely go on sale. (Hint: a good time to buy pots is mid-winter when nurseries don’t have anything in season. They’ll often have promotions for house plants that include pots and planters.) If money is tight go for the classic terra cotta planters, they have a timeless style and anything you put in them will simply enhance the look.
Build a garden box, if this isn’t your first rodeo and you’re ready to get that big garden going (I’ve been there), build a few! I definitely recommend building your own and will have a tutorial on here for them later in the spring. I’ve used reclaimed wood from the Rebuilding Center and new wood from the hardware store to build them, and the outcome is the same. If you like the fresh wood look, don’t get too attached because after one season they’ll transition to the rustic battered boards. There are all kinds of garden box/bed styles out there that don’t require as much wood: rocks, corrugated tin, wine bottles (???).
Get pots, boxes or planters for free from Buy Nothing, or create your beds with reused items. You get reclaimed wood for very cheap from reuse stores or use items from around your house or yard. I got an entire walls worth of beautiful rocks for free from Craigslist for a garden bed at our old house.
2. Fill with dirt and potting soil.
If this is your first time and you don’t have your fancy compost pile ready to go with nitrogen rich soil, then you can check your local Buy Nothing and see if anyone has any to spare, check Craigslist, or, depending on how much you need, get it from a bulk soil company (cheapest) or buy a bag or two at your local hardware store. I hate buying bags because there’s so much plastic waste (and it can be expensive), but sometimes it’s the most efficient way to get what you need. In the meantime, be thinking about your future compost pile that you’ll build so next year you can use that. Topsoil has a good composition of nutrients, but you may need to enhance your soil depending on what you’re planting.
My favorite book for gardening is The New Self Sufficient Gardener. I’m definitely too amateur to grow food to sustain life in my house. This book has information for most vegetables you’d plant in a backyard garden, when to plant seeds, what the soil should be like, pests and diseases you might have to deal.
3. Plant your seeds or buy starts. I have bought starts for the last few years because our house didn’t have enough sun to get them going. We also had two cats who would have taken great pleasure in dumping the trays of dirt onto the floor. I buy my starts from my local nursery (not the big box hardware stores) because they sell things that are in season and typically have organic and some rarer vegetables.
4. Water your garden.
We have a pretty spiffy irrigation system and I am very thankful for that. When we go out of town on weekends in the summer I don’t have to worry about my plants dying. Or when I come home from work I can sit on the deck and drink a glass of wine instead of running around watering everything. Nearly all my failures as a garden stem from watering issues. In Portland, Oregon, where we live, there are three months of very hot dry weather in the summer, some plants, no matter how much water they get die anyway. My squash really struggles, last year I didn’t get cucumbers until late September because the heat kept killing the flowers. So, rather than building an extensive and complex irrigation system, just have a plan to water everything. Manual or automatic. Both work if you can keep up with it.
5. Eat your amazing veggies, take pictures, post them on Instagram.
I think that’s self explanatory.
Good luck out there and tag me in your pics! I want to see you beautiful veggies from sprout to your plate!