5 Tips for Starting a Garden
Spring is almost here which means it’s time to start planning your garden! Gardens are a great way to grow some extra herbs and vegetables or to enjoy some beautiful flowers. Here are some tips for starting a garden.
Make a Plan
You know me. I love a good plan! Here are a few questions to ask yourself when planning a garden:
- Where will your garden be located?
- Does the location have at least six full hours of sun each day?
- Will you plant in pots or in the ground?
- What will you plant? Herbs, Vegetables, Flowers?
If you’re a beginner, it’s easy to get carried away. Choosing a few herbs and vegetables is a great start without setting yourself up for disappointment. Here are some easy plants and herbs to grow:
- mint (keep separate in its own pot)
- basil
- green onions
- tomatoes
- carrots
- lettuce
- marigolds
Start with Scraps & Slices
It can be very tempting to purchase small plants to start your garden, especially if you’re a beginner. But those small plants almost always come in a plastic container. Starting with scraps is much cheaper and involves less waste!
There are many vegetables you can regrow from scraps! Start with something easy, like green onions or lettuce. Simply purchase a bunch of green onions or a head of Romaine lettuce from your farmer’s market or grocery store. Make sure there are still some roots on your green onions. Chop off the tops and use them accordingly. Put the roots in a small glass or dish with water and watch them grow! After a while, you can transplant them into your garden. Check out this post for more:
You can do the same with tomato slices! This method for growing tomatoes was so surprisingly simple, now I only grow tomatoes this way! You simply cut a few slices of tomatoes and plant them in your pot. Cover it up with a little soil and water. After a while you’ll see some seedlings pop up!
Start with Organic Seed Packets
For flowers and other items you can’t start from scraps, pick up some seed packets. Double check that the packets themselves are made from paper. Sometimes you’ll find some that are made from plastic. Skip those.
Seed packets are a cheap way to test out different herbs, vegetables, and flowers without the extra plastic waste of a seedling container.
Choose Ceramic Pots
If you have some old pots laying around, great! Use those. If you have to purchase them, go with ceramic pots. A few years ago, I chose some cheap plastic pots that were self-watering. After one summer they started cracking from the all the sun exposure. Ceramic pots might cost a little more, but they’ll last more than one summer!
Use Egg Cartons For Indoor Seedlings
If you have a late frost where you live, and choose to start seedlings indoors, use paper egg cartons to grow the seedlings inside. When it comes time to transplant the seedling outside, you can simply separate the egg pod from the rest of the carton and plant the whole pod.
What do you think? Are you interested in starting a garden this Spring? What are your tips for starting a garden? Tell me in the comments!
For related and random posts, check out:
