New To Gardening? Spring Gardening Tips For Beginning Gardeners

Spring is here! It became official for me when I rolled my clock forward an hour. It is sometimes difficult to notice the seasons change here in San Diego. It isn’t like that everywhere though.

My wife and I were discussing our vegetable and flower garden the other day. We discussed the problems we faced when we first started gardening. There should be helpful tips for first time gardeners that come with the purchase of seeds or plants. That would be awesome!

It could be done, but starting your very own garden can be a daunting task. If you learn anything from me, let it be this: start out small. It can become very challenging if you have never had a garden before. I would suggest starting out by purchasing smaller plants. Get a few plants and get them established. Try a rhododendron, a few small perennials and an azalea. Once these are established you can begin another plant that needs more attention.

Beginning with a smaller garden will help you figure our how your yard works. Like which places get more sun, or more shade. Plus, you can see what parts get the most water.

But before you even think about planting, you need to take care of some spring cleaning first. Old mulch needs to be scraped away and the twigs, branches and sand from the winter need to be raked off the lawn, shrubs and grass.

If you have perennials, hedges or small trees in your yard, the dead leaves and twigs need to be cleaned off so the plant can re-grow properly in the spring.

The wintertime can be tough on plants. Snow and ice can weigh down on the branches and make the plant lose shape, so it’s important to make sure they are properly taken care of for spring. In the winter plants can be damaged by harsh conditions. When springtime starts plants have to come back to their normal resting place. You should have some sharp prunes and clip off some of the dead ends.

You can start planting your garden during the second or third week of April, depending on the weather. If you start too early, the plants may not survive. This has already happened to my peppers.

Trees with root balls can be planted earlier. Their roots are already acclimated to the soil in the root-ball.

When your plants first go in the dirt they will need heavy watering every other day until they are established. This is a very important part to remember.

Good Luck!

This entry was posted on April 26, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under Other Useful Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.