Basic Gardening Essentials
Thinking about starting a small vegetable or flower garden this summer? Here are a few basic gardening essentials that may help to ensure your success. Before you get started grab a notebook and pen. Go outside and take a walk around your yard. You may need to grab a chair and sit for a moment and imagine what you would like your garden to look like or basically what your favorite vegetables and/or flowers are.
The size of a garden really has no limits. Gardening can be done in pots or plots or even indoors as long as there is plenty of light, rich soil and water. With light, rich soil and water you'll have all the basics you need to become a thriving gardener. Of course you'll need seeds too.
When shopping for garden seeds, you may first want to print out a vegetable planting chart for the region you live in to make sure you are planting the proper seeds at the appropriate time and before a freeze date for your region. You can just google your state for a planting chart. This is a before picture of my vegetable garden.
Below are a few pictures of my garden growth progress. Pictured are my bell peppers and bush beans. This year I decided to plant an organic garden using organic seeds, plants and organic fertilizer.
Flowers Attract Pollinators - Bees!
They are also simply beautiful to look at.
Adding flowers to the garden is sexy!
I was so excited to be able to pick my first green bean harvest this year.
Green beans slowly steamed with fresh sweet onions are one of my favorite dishes.
I also planted a few more garden favorites. Tomatoes are just about the easiest to grow and can be grown in pots right on your front or back porch. I grow my tomatoes in my garden, but I also grow in pots. There are so many different types of tomatoes. Last year I made a mistake of planting purple tomatoes which weren't very tasty. This year I stuck with my favorite grape tomatoes for salads and big beefy tomatoes for sandwiches.
My next garden update, will be on raised gardening. After my first failed attempt this summer for planting lettuce, spinach, and cabbage, I decided to do raised bed gardening for these vegetables. Some vegetables thrive in almost any type of soil, like tomatoes. There are other vegetables like lettuce that prefer a more rich, loamy soil that contains plenty of organic matter. Below is a picture of my current garden project, my raised garden beds. I'm still in the process of planting a few more. As you can see my seedlings are already bursting through after just 5-6 days of planting. I'll be posting an update soon, so be sure to check back and happy gardening!
