10 Tips for New Gardeners

Here are some tips for people who might be starting their first garden.

1. The most important soil amendment you can use is water. Someone actually did a study to prove it, so don't let those tax dollars go to waste.
2. Visit your garden often, even if only for a few minutes. The easiest garden problem to solve is the one you discovered early.
3. Decide the size of your garden according to how much you want to weed, water, plant, fertilize, etc. Imagine yourself weeding the entire space at least once a week during the hot summer months.
4. Sunlight is really important. Make sure there is enough sunlight for the plants you want to grow.
5. Find the website for your state extension service and use it regularly.
6. Find out the proper planting time for the plants you want to grow.
7. Only buy healthy seedlings/plants. Go to another nursery if you have to.  Sick plants are disappointment waiting to happen.
8. Make at least one other gardening friend, preferably a seasoned expert. Maybe the easiest garden problem to solve is the one they discovered for you.
9. Get a good hat and a pair of gloves.
10. Don't get too discouraged. Experience is the best teacher, so chalk any failures or disappointments up as learning experiences, figure out where you went wrong, and move on to the next crop or season.

Is Gardening Green?

There are some aspects of gardening philosophy that I really wrestle with, and one of them is ecological impact.  There are a lot of good reasons why I believe that people should grow their own food, but I'm not sure that the saving the Earth is one of them.

Growing my own food does allow me to reduce the amount of food transported to me over great distances.  Also, my garden is mostly free of pesticides and totally free of herbicides.  When I do use pesticides I follow the instructions to the letter, and time my applications so as to minimize the threat to beneficials and pollinators.  (Many insecticides are only harmful to these creatures during the time it takes them to dry after being applied, so they should be applied in the early morning on a bright, sunny day.  After that they must be ingested - by an insect actually eating the plant - to kill.) 

However, there are a lot of good reasons to question the environmental benefits of growing your own food:

1. Excess packaging and shipping associated with any product purchased for use in the garden: tools, seeds, fertilizers, soil amendments
2. Environmental damage due to the production of these materials (I'm thinking of things like rock phosphate, chemical fertilizers, peat...)
3. Excess water use above what would be required in large-scale agricultural production
4. Damage to the soil due to improper/unskilled management (here I'm thinking about the fact that most farmers no longer till their land, while most gardeners still do, resulting in loss of topsoil and the disruption of the natural soil food web)
5. Loss of natural environment due to the extra land required for my inefficient (relative to professional agriculture) gardening
6. Extra energy required to store food produced in a seasonal climate for year-round consumption vs. transporting it from more temperate areas

It strikes me that even the most knowledgable and conscientious food-growing projects I've heard of rely on the import of - at minimum - lots of organic material from the surrounding area.  Many of them could not function in the absence of conventional agriculture.  Or they could, but would need to devote considerable land to the sole purpose of producing biomass to add to their food-producing soil.

What do you think?  Is gardening green?  Do the environmental benefits outweigh the drawbacks?

Budgeting for a New Garden

Food security is a powerful need in human beings as in all God's creatures.  During recent years the "Great Recession" has prompted a lot of people to start their first garden.  A recent issue of the Grow It Eat It News shared a few tips for gardening on a budget, but I haven't found a lot of good resources out there to help would-be gardeners to estimate their gardening costs.  My personal gardening philosophy in years past has been that if I am gardening to increase my food security it doesn't make a lot of sense to include a bunch of materials that are difficult to find in my area or which have to be transported over a great distance; however, sometimes I think such purchases are justified if I can imagine a reasonable substitute that requires more time/labor on my part that would be available in the event of major transportation interruptions.  (For example, I could probably use poo in my garden in a desperate situation, but for now store-bought fertilizer is a safer and more pleasant substitute.)

So here is a list of things you might want to put in your gardening budget:

• land expenses (unless you happen to already own a patch of land with good sun exposure)
• water (watering my community garden plot also incurs transportation expenses)
• seeds and/or plants (see below)
• soil amendments (e.g. compost, sand, manure, Mel's Mix -whatever you feel like paying for)
• fertilizer (unless you are amending with composted manure; don't waste all the rest of your invested time and money by skimping on fertilizer or soil tests!)
• soil test
• tools (see below)

At the risk of sounding preachy, please do yourself a favor and buy quality plants from a local nursery.  Inspect your purchases carefully (especially tomatoes) for any yellowing of lower leaves, or mottling (yellow splotches) or purple streaks anywhere on the plant.  If you bring a infected plant into your garden you will get very poor yields from it and reduced yields from other plants when the fungus or disease spreads to them; the disease and/or fungus will also remain in the soil wherever infected plants have been grown and infect next year's plants.  It's just not worth it!

New gardeners should try to borrow and/or buy used tools where they can; it's a good way to decide what tools you prefer working with, and will save you a lot of money if you end up deciding in July that gardening is just not for you.  There are a few basic tools, however, that you don't want to have to borrow every time you tend your garden:

• a nice spade
• trowel
• wheelbarrow / garden cart / buckets
• gardening gloves
• trellis materials (stakes, fencing/net, and ties)
• seed-starting trays
• seed-starting soil
• seed-starting fertilizer?  (I like to buy liquid for seedlings and dry for my garden)

You can argue with me about the gloves, but you'd be wrong.  You never know when you might squish a bunch of bugs with your bare hands, only to go inside and read online why they're called blister beetles.  Gardening gloves are very reasonably priced, too.

Trellises can be made from a really wide variety of scrounged materials.  Do a little snooping around the internet before you buy something expensive.

If you plan to start seeds indoors, you should think very honestly about how much natural light your plants are going to get and strongly consider also buying a shoplight.  Many people who think that their south-facing windowsill will be a good place to start seeds end up with a bunch of extremely tall seedlings that never get past the first (false) set of leaves. 

Things you can probably do without for your first season include:

• season-extension devices like wall-o-water, Reemay, cold frames, hoop houses, etc
• fencing
• raised bed frames

although you may want to consider the last two if the appearance of your garden is very important.

I'll try to update this post if I think of more.