Gardening « Pause for a Moment

Posts filed under 'Gardening'

Tips for the New Gardener

Okay so this is the first year I have had the opportunity to have a REAL vegetable garden of my own and boy has it been a learning experience. I have always wanted the green thumb and I think is creeping slowly with a slight yellowish green color just on the tip of my thumb but at least I am not jinxed with a black index finger that kills anything I touch! lol

For one, as a newb to the gardening hobby, I thought having a few different plants to experiment with would be good….and yes it was good but here are some very KEY things I have learned thus far:

1) My mom was right, tomato plants grow HUGE! Make sure you leave at least a foot and a half in between each tomato plant

2) Strawberry plants not only grow shoots but their shoots grow roots and then grow their own shoots so it gets really spread out and can take over a lot of the garden if your not careful. Lets just say I never knew the complex inner workings of this plant and never realized how dynamic of a grower it is

3) For your peas make sure you have a lattice style structure in place BEFORE your pea plants get to be half a foot long otherwise it makes it difficult to retrain them to grow straight

4) this tip is specifically for those who move to a climate that grows the beautiful vined ivy, or if you are growing a garden for the first time…they are a weed…beautiful but really overcompassing of other plants.

A lot of this was figured out today after a two week vacation, and then on top of that, a week of REALLY hot weather that was not very inviting to go and weed the MASSIVE jungle that had grown in my garden. Oh and tip number 5) don’t leave your garden for 3 weeks unweeded it makes for A LOT more time spent on your knees weeding. I also found out that BC has some slugs on steroids! Wow they were big!!

Here is a picture of my garden thus far:

My garden

Just to give you an idea as to what I am growing, in case you can’t tell…don’t worry I don’t blame you if its hard to figure out, this is AFTER it was weeded…lol

Alright to start off in the bottom left (of picture) is cucmber, its coming along slowly. Then above it is Zucchini, it is already growing blossoms. To the right of the Zucchini is my two tomato plants, from my more inexperienced side it looks like 4 or 5 plants to me. Next to the tomato plant is cilantro and next to it is celery, the cilantro is kind of overwhelmed by being surrounded by the tomato plant and celery that you can’t really see it. My peas are almost completely invisible because they are not currently growing up they are growing OUT and so are quite hidden. And then last but not least you can see my two strawberry plants. Where there is a big empty space I tried to grow pumpkin but I guess none of the three seeds rooted at all, but I think I am feeling a little overwhelmed with what I have got I think it was kind of a good thing!

Oh and you know what I never planted but will have to harvest as well? A huge raspberry bush, a pear tree, two plum trees and the unknown fruit tree….so I will be having LOTS of fun this summer!