Our First Garden
I am a beginner gardener which means I haven't had years of experience but I WAS able to be successful my very first try and here’s what I did!
Seed Starting:
I bought self watering trays so that the soil can pull in moisture from the bottom and all you have to fo is make sure the bottom tray stays filled which is less work than remembering to water every day.
I used a label maker to label my rows which made it easy to remember what I planted and have more variety.
I have some deep window sills that are the perfect spot for growing seeds! They started sprouting after one week and all came up!
Garden Beds:
We built these 3ft x 12ft garden beds that I started moving my seedlings too but probably too early. Most of them didn't make it so as it kept gradually getting warmer I would plant more seedlings until they became bigger instead of smaller.
I wish I would have transplanted some of them to bigger pots to get them a big bigger before trying to get them to grow in the garden beds. I did let them acclimate by putting them outside a few hours a day until I was able to leave them outside overnight.
Flowers:
I turned this front corner of our yard into a zinnia patch which was so fun and was the talk of the neighborhood! They eventually grew to be as tall as me and I even sold some in a corner flower stand!
I planted lots and lots of seeds to cut down on the amount of weeds that would be able to grow. The more I cut the flowers the more would grow! They took off about June and lasted until about October!
Gathering flowers became our evening activity and I had the cutest helpers!
For my flower stand I just used an outdoor bench and this outdoor umbrella with some dollar tree buckets and chalkboard sign. I put about 15 flowers per bouquet and added greenery to make it full. I did two flower stands and made about $220 total!
Growing Food:
For my vegetable garden I got these metal arches that I grew spaghetti squash on and couldn't get much else to grow up onto.
For our chicken coop I planted sunflowers all around which I absolutely loved but I will plant some perennials inbetween next time so that when the sunflowers die it's not back to being ugly.
My chickens loved eating the sunflower seeds once they would die off too!
I grew pumpkins which was quite a battle against squash bugs but I perservered and managed to grow a few pumpkins which has always been a dream of mine. I'm not sure I'll do it again this year since they do take up a lot of space but they can be so fun!
These are the tomato seeds I used and each variety came up and produced beautifully!
My tomatoes exploded and if you were to multiply this picture by 15 that's how many tomatoes I harvested!
Overall, I had a very successful year as a first time gardener and my biggest advice is to keep trying and try anything you want! I had to put down more zinnia seeds before they took off and I'm glad I didn't give up!
Have so much fun gardening and drop any questions below!
Xoxo,
