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Vegetable Gardening 101: 5 Gardening Basics for Beginners
Whether you’re container gardening, raised bed gardening or gardening in a small or larger plot of land, this article will help you. Nicole discusses the 5 basics of gardening in detail:
Soil
In addition to tilling, Nicole discusses soil analysis and things you can do to improve your soil. There are a lot of tools available that will help you to test your garden soil. This is the #1 soil PH tester on Amazon: Oakton EcoTestr pH 2 Waterproof pH Tester I also like the Luster Leaf Rapitest Soil Tester 1609CS It includes 10 total soil tests – 4 tests for pH levels, 2 tests for Nitrogen, 2 tests for Phosphorus, 2 tests for Potash Carded.
Water
Nicole discusses when and how much to water your garden. In my experience overwatering kills more plants than anything else. Long ago, I got a soil moisture meter that I use on houseplants, my container garden and my outdoor garden. You can buy an expensive one if you like. But I use this model. It’s reasonably priced and it works. Luster Leaf 1820 Rapitest Soil Moisture Meter
Sun
Nicole provides a nice list of vegetables that grow well in partial shade (4-6 hours of sun a day) and Full Sun (6+) hours a day.
Again, I like to take the guesswork out of gardening. There are reasonably priced sun meters like the Luster Leaf 1875 Rapitest Suncalc Sunlight Calculator (my favorite) or the SunCalc – Bonsai Tree Sunlight Calculator from BonsaiOutlet that will tell you if your proposed garden site (container garden or in-ground) gets full sun, partial sun, full shade or partial shade). Then you just plant the appropriate vegetables.
Care
If you garden then you know you’ll get weeds. But Nicole has some tips on what you can do to minimize weeding. She also discusses when to fertilize and which fertilizers you can use.
Time
It’s important to know when to plant your veggies. There are cool weather veggies (spring and fall) and there are warm weather veggies (summer). She includes some helpful links to help you here.
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