Advice for new gardeners.

O

olly-buckle

Active member
Location
E. Sussex
I notice new gardeners often ask for advice when they join a forum, and I thought if there was a thread we could all contribute to we could refer people to it rather than typing it all out again. More information for them, less work for us.

I'll start :-
Don't try to save every plant and nurse the sickly ones to health, it's a sure way to lots of work and no success, keep the best and compost the rest.

If you are growing veg. think about what you already eat first. Even potatoes tastes better when grown in the garden, and exotic and unusual veg are likely to be harder to grow.

A compost heap is a really good idea, but put it out of the way. Anything within eight feet of a compost heap is likely to get 'slugged'.

Look for cheap seeds, expensive does not mean better, it means they are harder to grow, not what you want when you are starting.
 
Patience is a gardener's friend, we are so used to doing something like decorating and getting a result. Even if the result is not immediate it is usually within a few days. That can make it difficult to think something may take a couple or three weeks to germinate, and then be ready sometime next year, longer if it is something like a tree.
Germinating and growing for a bit in containers gives you a bit of time to think where you will put them. Remember they grow, space them well in the rows when you plant out, a bit of extra space won't hurt most things, too close together will hurt most things
A nice little tree outside the living room window can turn into something that shades the whole front of the house and puts roots into the foundation. With plants the results of todays job may be quite far into the future.
 
I absolutely agree with @Anniekay on her advice.

TL/DR
1) Full sun = misnomer. Usually 6-8 hours.
2) Only the strong survive. Cull the weak. Nursing is WAY MORE effort than starting anew.
3) Prune with impunity. Plants grow, some grow A LOT. More green = less colors
4) Water less, deep, and slow. Too much is BAD. Bolus watering = flash flood effect
5) Spacing rules in effect. These tend to be more rules than guidelines.
6) Grow vertically, with effort. It takes extra work, but with extra benefits.
7) Air circulation is your friend. You don't like hot stale air, why should your plants?

My 2 cents... This year was my first season planting in a desert environment and boy did I have some hard lessons! I come from the Seattle area (zone 9a) and have all my knowledge rooted in such climates. Then I moved to the desert (zone 6a) and was literally stunted by the changes. It seemed that during my moving, the only thing in my repertoire that hadn't changed, was my knowledgebase. #rudeawakening

1) As said before, the "Full Sun" aspect is a bit of a misnomer. You think "full sun = ALL THE SUN", wrong! As stated, it means 6-8 hours of the "lesser" morning sun, usually. During peak summer days (about 30-60 days), my garden gets around 10-14 hours of pure no-holds-barred, unmitigated sun-ishment (as I call it). After many, many, many, maaaaaannnnnnyyyyyyyy losses, I invested in DIY hoop houses, sunshades and drip irrigation. #fixed

2) You can't save 'em all!! Believe me, I tried for 75 days this season. I had over 200 starters that grew stunted and root bound in 2" seed cells right out of the gate, because I was unable to attend to them for over a month. I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to revive them all. I had a 100% conversion (ability to save them and have them produce) failure rate for everything except the cucumbers and marigolds. In the end, out of the 200+ that I stunted, I was able to convert/save about 65 of them. This was with daily tending (we're talking ICU status), watering, feeding etc.. #capnsaveahoe

3) Pruning is your friend. Always the worry-wort, I tend to think things like "trim the suckers, is this a sucker?, trim all the suckers? is that too many suckers?". I let all 12 of my tomato plants grow wild, without any upkeep, and they were totally unmanageable (and non-productive) as a result. This was easily and rapidly corrected with ample pruning. I noticed as I had ever-increasing leafy vegetation (greens), I had a directly and adversely affected yield of vegetables (colors). It's just a simple power struggle for nutrients. #shearpower

4) Water less, water deep, water slow. As it turns out, I murdered around 300 seedlings this season from overwatering. Again, I was clueless as how to combat the heat and arid conditions of the desert (having come from lush PNW). My tiny mercenary mind thought "conditions too dry?, just add water", wrong! I was rotting the roots and creating a thriving environment for pesky little gnats/flies. I was soaking/saturating the topsoil with water every day, only to find that it was dry by midday again. What gives? Obviously, the Sun is up to her old tricks again. I unfortunately was only able to achieve proper irrigation when I introduced the automatic drip system. The time and effort associated with manual watering was just killing my will to even garden. $150 later and I'm all set.

****Grow bags do wonders for illustrating how irrigation works in your soil type. Fill the bag with your soil and pour your desired amount of water in a grow bag and come back later to check the soil at different depths. You may be shocked at how poor your habits actually are. I was.****

5) Spacing correctly is absolutely important but can be tricky. Do your research on this to avoid a poor yield. There are apps (with free monthly trials, tip = some give you an additional free month if you refer another, even if the other is a fake account ;)) that allow you to plot out your garden, and they provide pre-determined growing radius' so you can optimally plant. I didn't listen to the advice given by the app, and I planted my brassicas way too close to my cucurbits, and surprise surprise, the cucurbits flourished and completely overgrew the brassicas by a mile, thus leading to a 100% failure rate of the brassicas. #lessonlearned

6) Growing vertically takes effort. Just because the internet says you can "easily" grow plant-x vertically, doesn't make it so. As it turns out, the bulk of plants, even the vining plants still need some extra help to stay the course. Heck, to even get the course started. My exceptions this season being cantaloupe, watermelon, beans and cucumbers. I can't stop them from climbing to anything. Seriously, I'm certain my cucumbers would grow on spiderweb if possible. That being said, it's not always the "set and forget" type of activity you're led to believe it is. #spidervine

7) Lastly! Air circulation is a serious player. I had many failed attempts at correcting my poor yielding tomatoes this season. They were all remaining green on the vine for FOREVER, and I grew worried. I had failed to prune, and to compound things I added a sunshade canopy that trapped in stale hot air. Then I read a comment (probably on these forums) that said something to the effect of "if you can't see directly through to the other side of your crops, then they're probably too dense to ripen due to poor air circulation and overgrowth, and you should trim". I did just that, and within a week I had a row of ripened tomatoes FINALLY!

I hope this extremely long post helps someone with something. It felt good to get that off my chest. Writing it in a journal for nobody to see, just doesn't hit the same way.

Thanks for reading, or skimming, or pretending. lol
 
@Ostrodamus (name makes me smile) It may have been a long post, but it sure proves that you are a gardener with all the right ideas. The good bit is that however many years you do your gardening, you will always find something new to learn. It is such an important way of life for so many of us that we couldn't find anything else to replace it. I have been gardening for so many years now (about a hundred and fifty) and there are still things to learn, and still mistakes to learn by.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot - I am also a huge fan of regular pruning !!.....as long as it's at the right time.
 
I am going to point out what is to me a big oversight in this article from Better Homes and Gardens about soil amendments. They crossed the line into potting around and it would steer a new beginner the wrong way. In order to execute adding perlite or vermiculite to your lawn you would need to tiller it in which would decimate the existing root system. Maybe for a new lawn being bedded for sod installation its ok advice, but I am hard pressed to come up with another way to use it with grass on top. Maybe you could aerate it in but I tried that once and its stupid when the winds come and blow it away if its dry. Anyway here is perlite 5 and vermiculite 6 in their list of amendments for soil. Don't put vermiculite in a clay soil garden or you will drown everything. It holds so much water it really needs to be above ground level in a pot. When you dig it out to save the garden rows you can then spread it on the yard where there are bare spaces without tilling it into the lawn as it wont blow away.

Oh- my tip is relearn the word "Garden" to mean everybodys' plants of all types.

I will add another, that happiness is an empty garden cart. You either got done with one project or can start a new one.

www.bhg.com

6 Soil Amendments That Will Help You Grow Healthier Plants

Learning when and why to use these soil amendments will improve your gardening results and save you money.
www.bhg.com www.bhg.com
 
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As an ancient British gardener (gardening fruit, grass, trees, vegetables and flowers in a garden rather than a yard) I feel puzzled (one way of putting it) about the reasons that American friends feel the need to ''amend'' the soil all the time? There is just one American gardener I know of - on our forum thankfully, who will tell us how daft and unnecessary this is - someone who calls himself @Meadowlark - you know, the ''no NPK'' chap ;)
Here in the UK we would usually ask a new gardener to first check which soil they are working with - either acid or alkaline. Then we'd advise to only bother to plant things that like that sort of soil, and leave other things out.
Sorting out genuine difficulties like clay soil, as well as starting with potatoes on the veggie patch, and rose bushes in the flower garden (both are fine in clay) we'd just open the clay up a bit for drainage by adding grit. Our gardens here don't generally get ''tilled'' we turn 'em over with a fork - dig, rake, hoe !!
Over then to Meadowlark who is a far better teacher than I am about gardening the natural way with nature.
@Ostrodamus made a very good suggestion I thought with the experiment using grow bags, as well as the motto ''Water less, water deep, water slow''
 
Tetters said:
As an ancient British gardener (gardening fruit, grass, trees, vegetables and flowers in a garden rather than a yard) I feel puzzled (one way of putting it) about the reasons that American friends feel the need to ''amend'' the soil all the time? There is just one American gardener I know of - on our forum thankfully, who will tell us how daft and unnecessary this is - someone who calls himself @Meadowlark - you know, the ''no NPK'' chap ;)
Here in the UK we would usually ask a new gardener to first check which soil they are working with - either acid or alkaline. Then we'd advise to only bother to plant things that like that sort of soil, and leave other things out.
Sorting out genuine difficulties like clay soil, as well as starting with potatoes on the veggie patch, and rose bushes in the flower garden (both are fine in clay) we'd just open the clay up a bit for drainage by adding grit. Our gardens here don't generally get ''tilled'' we turn 'em over with a fork - dig, rake, hoe !!
Over then to Meadowlark who is a far better teacher than I am about gardening the natural way with nature.
@Ostrodamus made a very good suggestion I thought with the experiment using grow bags, as well as the motto ''Water less, water deep, water slow''
Click to expand...
Amendments have reason behind them. Meadowlark uses Sun Hempt to "amend" her soil. Any crop you grow to leave on or in the soil is an amendment as it breaks down and conditions ("amends") the soil.

Many of us have soil that is not fertile. My sandy soil drains so freely I can dig a 12" deep and round hole, fill it with water and it's dry enough to plant in in 4-5 minutes. If all I grew were what grows well here I would not be able to grow a veg, just the native wild flowers and things that "survive" in sand.

You @Tetters, are lucky to have clay soil. You can grow almost anything by just adjusting drainage to suit. I, on the other hand, have to amend my soil constantly to help build soil structure and retain moisture, because we have an average of 50" rain per year, not counting what comes from hurricanes, and nutrients wash right down through all that sand, out of reach of most plants.

Without amendments, all I would have for ornamentals are some Opuntia cacti, agave, a few cold tolerant palmetto trees, and crape myrtle trees. That's what my two neighbors grow and it is not pretty. Of course, you never see them tending to any of these plants.

I want to garden, not just plunk somethings into the ground and let them grow...or not. Might as well just stick plastic flowers in the ground if you don't care to have to help grow them, IMHO. I

I hope that didn't sound sharp as it wasn't meant to be.
 
Anniekay said:
Amendments have reason behind them. Meadowlark uses Sun Hempt to "amend" her soil. Any crop you grow to leave on or in the soil is an amendment as it breaks down and conditions ("amends") the soil.

Many of us have soil that is not fertile. My sandy soil drains so freely I can dig a 12" deep and round hole, fill it with water and it's dry enough to plant in in 4-5 minutes. If all I grew were what grows well here I would not be able to grow a veg, just the native wild flowers and things that "survive" in sand.

You @Tetters, are lucky to have clay soil. You can grow almost anything by just adjusting drainage to suit. I, on the other hand, have to amend my soil constantly to help build soil structure and retain moisture, because we have an average of 50" rain per year, not counting what comes from hurricanes, and nutrients wash right down through all that sand, out of reach of most plants.

Without amendments, all I would have for ornamentals are some Opuntia cacti, agave, a few cold tolerant palmetto trees, and crape myrtle trees. That's what my two neighbors grow and it is not pretty. Of course, you never see them tending to any of these plants.

I want to garden, not just plunk somethings into the ground and let them grow...or not. Might as well just stick plastic flowers in the ground if you don't care to have to help grow them, IMHO. I

I hope that didn't sound sharp as it wasn't meant to be.
Click to expand...
Not sharp but I can tell you are busy.

You should try vermiculite and charcoals (biochar) in sand. Sandy soils lack carbon commonly. COH is more important than NPK not that they are not both nice at gatherings.
 
Dirtmechanic said:
Not sharp but I can tell you are busy.

You should try vermiculite and charcoals (biochar) in sand. Sandy soils lack carbon commonly. COH is more important than NPK not that they are not both nice at gatherings.
Click to expand...
I have quite a bit of real coal in my garden because they burnt coal in the fireplaces when this house was built. You can hardly put a shovel in the ground without coming across it.
I do put biochar on the roots of my transplants but compost seems to do the job...until the rains wash all the nutrients that the plants hadn't used up yet out of it.
 
Anniekay said:
I have quite a bit of real coal in my garden because they burnt coal in the fireplaces when this house was built. You can hardly put a shovel in the ground without coming across it.
I do put biochar on the roots of my transplants but compost seems to do the job...until the rains wash all the nutrients that the plants hadn't used up yet out of it.
Click to expand...
Thats my problem with compost. I put it out and 6-18 months later its hard to see evidence I did anything. I switched to the carbon base really just to make it last better.
 
Logan said:
Don't sow all the seeds in a packet. I don't bother washing pots out, they're fine.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I almost always never sow all the seeds in a packet. Save some for replacements and/or use in succession planting which I do a great deal of. It never has made sense to have everything mature at same time when you can't used it all at once...unless canning or otherwise preserving.

My compliments to @Logan for a tip I never see others print, but I always use myself.
 
@Anniekay actually, I am even luckier than that, as my particular bit of land is mostly good loam, I don't even have the problems of clay here, and although the higher ground has an awful lot of chalk, there are still a lot of plants that are happy to grow there.
When I think of America, I imagine that the soil is similar, but have no first hand knowledge, and this is why I question the need for so many amendments.
I believe the UK would fit into the USA about 47 -48 times over, and there must be an extremely diverse difference between the different areas there.
Things are clearly very different here. I have heard from others there that some of the land where they happen to live has been previously contaminated with some agent or another, and it seems that soil testing is used more often for many reasons.
I can't imagine trying to make a garden on sand - flowers in the desert must take a lot of skill and patience too.
My kids have similar stumbling blocks in Australia. I note that in the far south - Tasmania, the conditions are easier than the drier places further north.
On the negative side here, there are lots of tropical plants I cannot grow outdoors.
 
Tetters said:
@Anniekay actually, I am even luckier than that, as my particular bit of land is mostly good loam, I don't even have the problems of clay here, and although the higher ground has an awful lot of chalk, there are still a lot of plants that are happy to grow there.
When I think of America, I imagine that the soil is similar, but have no first hand knowledge, and this is why I question the need for so many amendments.
I believe the UK would fit into the USA about 47 -48 times over, and there must be an extremely diverse difference between the different areas there.
Things are clearly very different here. I have heard from others there that some of the land where they happen to live has been previously contaminated with some agent or another, and it seems that soil testing is used more often for many reasons.
I can't imagine trying to make a garden on sand - flowers in the desert must take a lot of skill and patience too.
My kids have similar stumbling blocks in Australia. I note that in the far south - Tasmania, the conditions are easier than the drier places further north.
On the negative side here, there are lots of tropical plants I cannot grow outdoors.
Click to expand...
Yes we have a miriad of different soil types and conditions. For example: In New England there are 4' tall by 4' wide walls around every 1/2 acre of land. They have to be removed from the soil so that one can plant. Rocks literally everywhere.

In South florida the soil is sandy with a very high water table. Central Fl. near lake Okeechobee is gritty black muck soil. Sticky like clay but not clay. Sugar Cane is the predominent crop there. And the last example, New Jersey, best soil ever !! It's not called the Garden State for nothing!! When I gardened there all I needed to add was a tiny bit of lime. Great sandy loam there. So, yes and California is different, the Prairie lands are again different on infinitum.
 
Logan said:
Don't sow all the seeds in a packet. I don't bother washing pots out, they're fine.
Click to expand...
I didn't bother to clean pots at one time either, this is a rule I picked up when I began working at the nursery. The boss made it clear that re-using pots was a must, unless the old pots were completely sterilised. This habit ensures that diseases cannot pass from one plant to another. This was the reason that new pots HAD to be used for our plants, as the sterilisation process was not a viable option for the sake of speed. These days, especially for Ziggy's plants for distribution, used pots are always sterilised.
I admit, I now cheat a little bit when it comes to my ornamentals.
 
Anniekay said:
Yes we have a miriad of different soil types and conditions. For example: In New England there are 4' tall by 4' wide walls around every 1/2 acre of land. They have to be removed from the soil so that one can plant. Rocks literally everywhere.

In South florida the soil is sandy with a very high water table. Central Fl. near lake Okeechobee is gritty black muck soil. Sticky like clay but not clay. Sugar Cane is the predominent crop there. And the last example, New Jersey, best soil ever !! It's not called the Garden State for nothing!! When I gardened there all I needed to add was a tiny bit of lime. Great sandy loam there. So, yes and California is different, the Prairie lands are again different on infinitum.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, I'm finding the info very educational.
 
I worked at a nursery many years ago where they rinsed pots but didn't sterilise them. I was told by the owner they were stored in darkness for a number of months and that was enough.
 

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