Smart Tips for Gardening Newbies

Don’t Stop Learning

It does not seem to matter if a person is a seasoned gardener or a beginner, the excitement of each year brings forth much anticipation. Unless or until you have been doing this for an extremely extended period of time, there are always going to be things to learn and discover. For example, you can save yourself some massive headaches just by doing some simple planning. Proper preparation for the growing season that is coming up can help you in more ways than you know. How well you are able to plan will depend on a number of factors such as your local soil conditions and knowing what has the best chance to thrive. Here are a few gardening tips that will help you and your garden thrive.

Consider the Layout

You can try something new if you don’t mind drawing, so get a pen and paper and a cup of your favorite beverage and have a seat. What we suggest you do is make a detailed map or plan of all your gardens. Using this type of planning scheme can result in beautifully designed flower gardens. If you choose to do a vegetable garden, this precise planning will let you get the most out of your allocated space. For vegetable gardening, get the details and figure out the number of plants that can be allowed in each row. This allows you to save planting space and time when you learn how many plants you can squeeze in.

Look for Quality Bulbs

If you go online, or read gardening magazines, then you no doubt have seen tons of places peddling their bulbs. While we basically have no issues with that, you must take great care about where you get your bulbs. If you find a bulb supplier you really like on the Internet, that’s fine. But for us, we greatly prefer buying from our local nurseries when it comes to bulbs. The main reason for that is we can get our hands on them and inspect them, look at them, feel their firmness and so on. You should try that first–plus, visiting nurseries is fun!

Understand Fertilizers

Pretty much everybody has at least heard of peat moss once before. We’re willing to bet, though, that not every gardener is going to use it correctly; most gardeners seem to think that peat moss just gets thrown into things.

Peat moss is organic material, and as such it does have a certain amount of nutritional quality. It was not, though, ever intended to be used as fertilizer. Peat moss is great for mixing in to compact soil so that it takes on a lighter quality and a finer grade. You can also mix fertilizer with peat moss, as well. It’s also good to mix peat moss into soil that is really really fine which keeps it from being able to properly retain moisture.

The number of variables to consider when planning a garden is not small; this is true whether you’re growing food or flowers. Space is really important and it will be a major deciding factor for you. Don’t let yourself get discouraged by small spaces if you really are determined to plant things like vegetables. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish when you plant in wide rows.