Introduction

Do you enjoy gardening? If you love growing or nurturing plants, then you are a person endowed with green thumbs. Growing plants is a sense of well-being, in the real sense of the term. You drop the seeds into the soil. Place the soil and seeds in a flower pot. Gently pour drops of water. When the first shoot blooms, your happiness means no bounds. As a beginner, here are 8 golden tips on how you can grow your garden right there from scratch. Let us get started!

• Choosing the right spot

Even if you own a smaller space for your garden, you must make sure, that this place is the ideal one for your plants. Make sure, you choose an area that receives at least 5-6 hours of sunlight every day. You can also choose an open-ended balcony that is situated in your very own apartment or flat.

Here is one vital piece of info you must keep track of. You must not choose an area or space that has strong winds. Fast-paced winds can easily knock over young or budding shoots from blooming. Winds also prevent pollinators from doing their job. Henceforth, choosing the right spot for your green location is of paramount importance indeed.

• What kind of plants would you need for your garden?

Do you want a garden full of exotic flowers and herbs that you can visualize day in and day out? Or, would you want to grow a kitchen garden filled with succulent veggies or fruits to nurture the budding chef in you? Or, are you interested in a terrace gardening format where you want to grow an exclusive array of vegetables meant for cooking? Hence, deciding on the right type of plants, you would need for the garden, is the next important step in your journey towards gardening.

• Assess the quality of your soil

To space your garden area neatly and precisely, you must access the quality of soil you have on hand. To test for nutrient-dense gardening soil, this is a litmus test you can put yourself to. You must examine the quality of the soil. High-quality soil can easily be shovelled. Also, does the soil easily crumble into your hands? Then, this kind of soil is the right one for you to continue your efforts in gardening.

On the other hand, hard or clay-like soil is difficult for the plants to grow well. If you find that the soil is filled with rocks or tiny pebbles, then you must till the soil until the rocks or pebbles are removed from the soil’s texture. Again, you can also improve the texture of your soil by adding vegetable peels, tea-based compost and so on.

1. Get hands-on with your own set of gardening tools
   Before you embark on your very own gardening spree, you must have this set of garden tools. This way, you can kick-start the process in a hassle-free manner. Let us check into what the tools are:
2. Pruning scissors
   A first-timer gardener must have pruning scissors to cut or trim plants or bushes, back and forth. To maintain your plants well, you must also chop off the dead ends of these plants.
3. Digging tools
   You must also own a set of digging tools to aid you with the process. You would need a spade, trowel and a garden fork. The spade and trowel are meant to create holes for your plants, whereas the garden fork is meant to break larger clumps of soil. The garden fork can also help you clear up old plants or weeds.
4. Watering tools
   You need the right set of tools to ensure a uniform distribution of water for your plants. You can be rest assured that the garden hose is the best tool for watering larger areas of green pastures including that of trees. You can also use a generous hose pipe to cover a wider width of your garden area. If you have a smaller gardening space, then you can own a watering can to generously water your indoor or balcony plants with.
5. Weeding tools
   You must own weeding tools to keep invading plants at bay. These are weeds or unwanted plants that steal away the nutrition in terms of water, manure or fertilizers for the actual growing plant or tree. Hence, you must own a forked trowel and a gardening knife to keep weeds away.

• Choosing your own set of plants

The first four steps are aimed at helping you do the prep work for your gardening process. Now is the most exciting part. You must choose your own set of plants for your garden. Determine a seasonal variety of fruits, vegetables or flowers that grow well during the particular climate. That should help you facilitate the choosing process in the right manner. You can also choose seeds or saplings native to your area. This way, you know parent plants grow well here. So, you can allow your shrubs or plants to shoot green, without the least element of doubt.

• Get the planning process streamlined

You have three vital stages concerning planning. These are planning, labelling and organizing. Let us have a look at how each of these stages be carried out perfectly:-

1. Planning
   You must furnish a road map of where you plan to plant all of your plants. Once the specific area space has been earmarked, you have one more important thing to do. You can plan where each plant is to be kept. Here, you must also space out the plants on a uniform scale. Placing the plants too close to each other can also be detrimental to their growth and well-being.
2. Labeling
   All of us are quite forgetful. Therefore, you must devise a plan to keep track of what type of plants you have planted before. These can be bamboo shoots, veggie seeds or exotic variants of flowers. You can place fancy or creative names for each of them. You can place creative labels beside each of the plants. Otherwise, you can stick postcards on each of them giving each plant genre unique description tags.
3. Organizing
   When you send your kids to school, how do you gauge the progress of your kid’s academic performance? Every quarter or two, tests or examinations are conducted to gauge how far the child has understood the concepts in the correct context. Grades are awarded to the kid and progress report cards are furnished to each kid. This way, the kid’s performances in scholastic and extracurricular activities are tracked.

Similarly, you must also do the same for your plants. You must maintain a garden scrapbook to chart out the progress of your garden. You can do sketches, and add labels, pictures or notes to know how each plant is progressing in its journey. This way, you have made yourself a progress report of plants that are stationed in your garden.

• Have you thought of the idea of maintaining garden beds?

Once you have allocated spaces for your plants, tilled the soil and organized your groundwork, comes the time to execute. You can start up by organizing garden beds, after all. Again, you must plan to allocate the size of your garden bed. Raised garden beds are more attractive to look at. These beds should be placed 3-4 feet across, narrow enough for you to reach the centre from either side. The beds must also be placed 8-10 feet long so that you do not step into the bed planting area. Here are three ways how you station your garden beds systematically:

You can place garden beds onto raised or elevated blocks so that they become easier for you to maintain.

Else, you can place your greens in rows

Or, you can have garden beds positioned via grids.

Here is the most important step you must keep track of. You must give each plant its own space to thrive or survive. The blooms or shoots may initially be small but once they grow into fully-grown plants, then it becomes difficult for the plants to thrive or survive. Hence plants must be spaced in an even-paced manner. Above all, you must add fertilizers, compost manure and soil condiments to each of your plants periodically.

• Water the plants regularly

You need to water your plants regularly. The plants derive nutrition through the soil. You must therefore water your plants in a slow-paced manner. Make sure, you water your plants so that the soil gets moist at least 3-4 inches beneath the surface area. Again, you must water your plants regularly for the summer months. You can water your plants at least once every 2-3 days depending on the weather conditions. I would say that watering plants every alternate day would be the most ideal option here.

Conclusion

We have seen 8 systematic steps on how to grow your very own garden. So, what else are you waiting for? Get started with your green campaign immediately!

Ideas inspired by 18 Gardening Tips For Beginners In India (all that grows in)

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