At Home Guide to Gardening

Gardening at home can seem like a daunting task if you’re not already doing it- but it doesn’t have to be. 

Your introduction to at home gardening doesn’t have to be everything all at once. Your first garden doesn’t have to sustain your whole family and eliminate your grocery store trip, but having a small garden so you can grab a handful of parsley for when you need it can be convenient, and can help reduce waste if you too have been known to buy an entire bunch of an herb, only to use a 4th of it for one recipe, and then leave it to go bad in the fridge.

Additionally, starting with a small garden and adding fresh herbs (oregano, parsley, thyme, basil, etc) to food more often is a great way to elevate your health. 

In this at home gardening guide we’ll break down how to get started, what plants might be best for you, and how you can work on growing your garden organically.

The good news is a lot of the herbs that I listed above are relatively easy. With some good soil, sunlight, and water they’ll grow with minimal effort. 

What should I plant, and when should I start? 

Your grow season will vary depending on the zone you’re in. In order to figure out what zone you’re in, and what plants grow well in your zone click here.

Your zone will also determine the best time to start your garden. General rule of thumb is to plant after the last frost. Certain things like leafy greens you can continue to harvest through the first frost. 

When picking your garden’s location you’ll want to consider how much sunlight you get as well. Most of your common garden plants thrive in full sunlight, but you have a few options if you don’t have an optimal spot for full sun. This article gives you some options if you don’t have a ton of sunlight.

Lastly, think about what you actually enjoy eating, Everyone plants tomatoes, but if you don’t like tomatoes, they don’t have to be part of your first garden. That being said, I encourage everyone to try food that they grew even if they don’t think they’ll like it. An organically grown tomato that came from your garden really can’t compare to a store bought one, even if you thought you [previously didn’t like them. 

At home compost 

If at home composting is a daunting task for you you’re not alone. If you’ve found yourself with a composter full of rotting food that you just can’t seem to get all the way composted, you’ve come to the right place. Chances are your greens to browns, or wet to dry ratio is off, thus resulting in a mushy mess of rotting food, likely attracting flies and other unpleasant critters. This can be fixed! It’s not as hard as it seems, and with frequent stirring and a balanced ratio of nitrogen to carbon, your compost should decompose quickly, with minimal bugs swarming around, and should smell like fresh earth, not rotting food. 

In my experience a ratio of greens to browns should actually be closer to 35-65 (greens to browns) rather than 50-50. Your “browns” are items with less nitrogen and more carbon, which is typically your dry items like dried leaves, cardboard without tape or plastic on it, cardboard egg cartons without the plastic label on them, and paper – these all make good browns for your compost bin. The browns in your compost bin provide carbon to break down the food waste. 

Your “greens” are pretty much everything else. Anything wet, lawn clippings, fruit and vegetable scraps, most of what you’ll find in your kitchen. Your green scraps provide the nitrogen. A balanced compost bin needs both in order to turn into the beautiful dirt you want for your garden. 

Too many greens and your compost pile will remain a rotting pile of stinky mush. Too many browns and your compost and the waste won’t break down very quickly, and it will be very dry. 

Monitoring and adjusting your greens to browns ratio frequently as well as consistent turning and stirring of your compost is the formula to success when it comes to a thriving compost pile! 

This article goes into more depth about getting your at home compost pile started.

Alternatively, if this isn’t your jam but you still want to do some good for the planet, you could consider a composting service. 

If you’re in the Michigan area check out our very own! 

If you’re located elsewhere, check out this national website for finding compost services near you. They’re not that expensive and the best way to help out the planet, in our opinion. Odds are whatever service you go with will give you some free compost as well. 

Troubleshooting your garden

So, you’ve planted the garden, picked your crops based on your zone, waited for the last frost, your sunlight is optimal, and your compost pile has a perfect ratio of greens to browns. 

So why aren’t your plants growing or looking the way you had hoped? 

I’ll go over a couple of the most common problems beginner gardeners experience and how to mix some of those things. 

Low on calcium 

There are a couple ways to tell if your garden is deficient in calcium and a couple ways to fix it. 

The first two, and the ones that tipped me off in my own garden, are leaves curling in on eachother, sometimes referred to as “parachute leaves” by fellow gardeners, and discoloration on your leaves such as browning or yellowing. 

Additionally, slow growth may be a sign of calcium deficiency. 

I recently learned that calcium in the form of crushed up eggs shells (a very common garden fertilizer) can take years to become bioavailable in the soil. A good alternative for this is to crush your egg shells up in vinegar and then dilute with water with a 1 part calcium to 1000 part water ratio. This is approximately 3/4 teaspoon to a gallon of water. The calcium is immediately available in a water soluble form, plus, you can see the reaction the egg shells and vinegar have, almost immediately! Which is pretty cool. 

Unbalanced pH levels 

Too much acidity, or too alkaline soil can lead to problems in your garden as well. While there are some signs your garden may present, buying a pH level kit can help you figure out the pH balance of your soil. This can lead to less trouble later on, if you know your pH levels ahead of time. 

Compost can be a great way to balance the pH of your soil and bring it back down to neutral. 

Limestone (lime) is one of the most common additives to raise the pH of your garden. For organic gardening, calcitic lime or dolomite lime works well. Quicklime is not approved for organic gardening and can cause rootburn Woodash or Baking soda are both effective options for raising pH levels, and more cost effective. 

Generally a healthy pH level for soils is between 6.5 and 7.0. 

Tomatoes, parsley, and blueberries, to name a few, all like acidic soil. Some plants that prefer alkaline soil include cabbage, kale, and leeks.

Pests 

If your plants have holes or bites taken out of them you may have a problem with pests (or small animals, depending on the size of the bite, more on that later). 

Rather than spraying conventional pesticide, neem oil can be a great natural alternative to conventional pesticides if you’re experiencing pests in your garden. Neem oil comes in a few different forms, but is derived from the Neem tree, and can be purchased in a concentrated form or ready to be sprayed. If you’re unfamiliar with neem oil, try it out on one leaf before you spray the whole plant as it can cause chemical burns on seedlings or plants that are too young. 

Simply follow the instructions on the bottle (dilute with water if you’ve bought the concentrated version) and spray liberally all over your plant, making sure to get the undersides of the leaves as well. Check your plants again for pests in 3-4 days, respray if you’re still seeing pests. 

If animals are getting into your garden one of the best things you can do is simply cover the garden with chicken wire or mesh so animals can’t get to it. 

Nutrient deficiency

At the first sign of nutrient deficiency, I like to add a handful of fresh compost next to my plants. In fact, if you google “natural ways to add nutrients to your soil” you’ll get many suggestions for things that are already present in compost, grass clippings, banana peels, egg shells, coffee grounds etc. See above for making your own compost.

Vermicompost is also a great additive for soil nutrients. Vermicompost is the process of using earthworms to break down your food waste to create worm castings. Vermicompost is widely considered to be garden magic, and goes beyond compost by also adding all the beneficial microorganisms that create the compost, back into the garden. 

Making your own vermicompost can be challenging but if you enjoy a good project, it may be worth a shot. Click here to learn more about getting started. 

If vermicomposting is not up your alley, and you’re in the Detroit area, you can order it already made here. 

Conclusion

A garden for a first time gardener will require trial and error. You’ll find that some plants are more particular than others, and getting everything balanced the right way on the first shot may be harder than you expect. 

Don’t get discouraged! A garden is an experiment and not all experiments will be successful on the first attempt, and even if they are there’s always room for improvements. 

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