If your a beginning gardener there are a ton of pit falls before you. Also a lot of misinformation and just plain bad advice. Be encouraged and pick up on some great tips in this video!
now the first thing I want to do is offer you some encouragement because growing your own food is not an easy thing But I tell you what you are living in one of the best ages to grow because you have the internet and you have a whole bunch of other things at your disposal like YouTube and Facebook and all these other places that you can gather information from You know not less than 50 years ago if you wanted to learn how to garden you learn from your parents your grandparents or from a neighbor or something like that that was a gardener Gardening was something that was passed down through friends and family You know it wasn’t something that you decided you wanted to be a gardener you could go and find the information yourself because it wasn’t really written down There were a few books out that would help but it was more than likely passed down through your family or your friends that you had So if you’re a person like me and you learn visually YouTube is one of your your best resources to to learn how to do certain things in a garden You can find everything on how to build garden beds to preparing your soil to how to fix certain soil types If you can imagine something it’s on YouTube I want you new beginner gardeners to have access to whatever you need I have a Facebook group called Grow the Earth of course and there’s a good community of people in there that will help and that will uh help you learn Uh it doesn’t necessarily have to be my page If you want to go to other gardening uh Facebook pages there’s plenty of those there There’s plenty of people that are willing to help Now with that being said I will tell you don’t take advice on face value with some of these people that you run across on the internet that you run across in Facebook groups because a lot of them don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go in and correct certain people and tell them “No that’s not correct You’re not telling this new gardener the correct way to handle this situation and they’re going to fail.” And you know it there’s a lot of misinformation So take what somebody says do your own research and then proceed from there You know it’s always nice to have a a group of like-minded people that you can share ideas with and that will help you in your time of need but not all people are there have a a good grasp on what they’re doing So just keep that in mind as you reach out to or look for advice in these columns Now if you’re like my wife who loves to read then this book right here is going to be one of your best resources Now I know it says organic gardening on the front but this is not simply about organic gardening This is everything that you could ever ask for in a book about gardening from techniques to how to grow certain vegetables to the diseases and how to how to fix them Uh the the list goes on and on and it’s a book that you it even has a quick reference in the back of it to where you can look up what you have going on and it will direct you to pages or if you have a certain vegetable or a certain fruit that you’re looking at you can go directly to the page and you don’t have to search through it I also want to encourage you new gardeners into knowing that you don’t have to have a big garden like I have here If you want to garden in ground great If you want to garden in raised beds great If you want to garden in pots fabric pots or even if you want to use five gallon buckets you get from the automotive or the hardware store a garden is a garden and it doesn’t have a specific size You know if you want to grow vegetables and fruits like what I show you here today great You’re going to have a lot of rewarding things in your future If you want to grow flowers just to make your your yard look beautiful and pretty and to have people compliment your yard because of your flowers absolutely go about it and do what you want to do with it But you’re going to face struggles in either case and you’re going to have things that are going to happen Trust somebody who’s been growing for a lot of years I have probably killed more plants than I can think of The ones that I’ve grown well are outmatched by the the plants that I’ve killed more and more and more times over You’re going to fail But don’t lose hope You’ll grow again next year It’s a learning process I am still learning There are still people that I watch on YouTube and there are certain things that I still research and read that I didn’t know that I was actually doing wrong So we constantly learn We constantly innovate We constantly find new techniques We find new ways to do certain things and you’re going to learn how to grow better Now the reason I point out the many ways that you can grow as far as potting and stuff like that you don’t even need a yard to grow your fruits vegetables flowers whatever it may be If you’re an apartment that has a southacing window you can grow If you’re in a a you know a space that doesn’t have a whole lot of yard but you’ve got access to a south facing area you can grow You just have to grow the types of plants or flowers that will grow in the space that you have according to how much light you get That is one of your limiting factors is how much light you can get to those plants Even if you have one singular raised bed you can grow a ton of fruits and vegetables and things in it because there are methods like the square foot gardening method to where no plant takes up more than a 12 x 12 square So if you have a 3×4 bed which is 12 square foot you can grow 12 plants because each one of those will take up no more than a square foot So you can supplement your grocery bill You can eat healthier You can enjoy the fact that you’re eating something that you’ve grown and it takes up no more than one square foot per plant And that’s being generous because some of your smaller plants like if you’re growing a radish or a carrot or something like that that doesn’t take up a whole lot of space you can get multiples into a square foot You know I think that we on average grow between four to six radishes in a square foot So you can grow plenty of food out of just 12 square foot And the more you add on the more that you can grow I have to say one of the biggest mistakes I see beginning gardeners make is they go too big too soon What I mean is they decide they want to do a garden They tear up threequarters of their yard They start planting They start doing everything goes south They didn’t do their research They think that you put plants in ground you add water and you have food and they get disillusioned with the fact that they can’t grow everything that they can’t They think they they want to Not only are they planting certain plants at the wrong time but they’re not adding the nutrients that those plants need and they end up killing everything and they look at it as a big waste of money a big waste of time and they stop They don’t continue growing food They give up on it and they move away My best advice start small If you’re going to you know you want to get into gardening unless you have some experience or unless you have extensively researched what you’re going to do start small Okay you’re going to learn your skills Hone your skills as a gardener then go bigger As you learn how to take care of that smaller space the first year expand you know get a little more space get a little more area and then move up and move out to different vegetables and different fruits because it takes a lifetime to master gardening and you’re going to need to kind of ease into things You know it’s the same thing I see people doing with chickens They go out they buy 15 20 chickens they go and they buy a coupe they’ve invested all this money and they’re not getting the eggs that they think that they need you know uh or they have some disease that comes in and starts affecting their chickens and they don’t know how to attack it to prevent it from spreading to their other chickens and they have a die- off So unfortunately going too big too soon can be not only detrimental to your mental health but also to whatever it is that you are trying to grow or trying to to raise So again go small hone your skills learn things and as you start to learn more and more then expand your garden and begin to to to really come into your own Now I’m going to tell you one thing that every gardener hates to see in his garden One thing that they will always have to deal with is weeds These things will pop up out of nowhere They get blown in with the the spring winds and the spring rain and you’re going to have to deal with weeds It’s something that every gardener deals with every gardener hates to deal with but it’s a necessary evil within the gardening community And I’m going to tell you that the best tip that I can give you is to take some time and kind of daily walk through your garden You will catch diseases faster You will pick your fruit at the ripest You will be able to to spend five to 10 minutes in your garden a day and you will be able to pick your weeds and stay on top of it Whenever you set and forget your garden you’re going to find out that those five or 10 minutes that you would spend a day end up to be a full day later on of trying to get a hold of what has gone on in that week or that two weeks that you haven’t really messed with your garden So gardening is not a timeconsuming thing unless you make it that way If you look at your garden and go “Oh well it rained today I don’t need to water You know I’ve got mulch I don’t have to water as much.” And you look at it from inside your house and you never go out there You’re going to come out later on to find certain things have gone on and now you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to fix what has gone on You know probably one of the things I enjoy most about my garden is the fact that I have a hard job If I’m out working all day long it’s stressful When I come home I need some relaxation and going out in my garden walking through and picking a couple of weeds and picking some fruit picking some vegetables and just enjoying the space that I’ve created is probably one of the most therapeutic things that I get in my day And that should be what you have for your garden too It shouldn’t be something you dread going out to and doing It shouldn’t be something that you dread that you’ve got to do all of this work and you’ve got all this stuff that you’ve got to take care of It’s got it’s supposed to be a space to where you can relax and let the things of the world that you’ve had to deal with in the day go by Now another big mistake that I see gardeners dealing with and that I see a lot of questions on is “Do I need to change out my soil this especially goes to people who either garden in buckets or in in bags or in pots They think that the soil that they’ve grown something in previously is no good anymore That everything has been sucked out of it and it’s worthless We need to throw it out That’s a very wasteful thing to do Number one Number two is the soil that you buy in bags at the store None of it has everything in it to grow vegetables in You always have to add nutrients You have to add fertilizers You have to have add things that are helpful to grow those plants because that soil that you buy in the store doesn’t have it So thinking that the soil you bought last year is no longer good this year because it’s been depleted of everything is just a false way of thinking No matter what soil you have you’ve got to add to it year over year or season over season And I say season over season because I break our seasons here in Texas into two different categories I have spring and I have fall because we plant very different things in each one and we prepare for them to grow separately each time So I am taking my spring crops all the way through almost the end of summer and then I am prep-preparing all my beds and I am planting my fall crops that go all the way through fall and winter into spring Now this may not apply to your area because you may live a little further up north to where during the winter you can’t really grow unless you’re growing in a greenhouse or something like that Here in Texas we can pretty much grow year round we have to just change what we’re growing So no your soil doesn’t deplete You just need to add to it to make it more fruitful and more vibrant And if you’re growing in the same soil year after year and you haven’t added fertilizers or you haven’t added any kind of composted things to it and you’re seeing poor results that’s probably why The other thing that I see a lot of gardeners falling into the trap of is that we have to buy new seed every year Now seeds in general will store for 2 to three years in decent conditions and that means a cool dark place They will store for two to three years without pretty much without fail After that you start losing your germination rate Meaning for every 10 seeds you’ll have less and less that will end up being a plant Now how long that takes to fall off to almost an absolute zero depends on the plant That depends on how you’re storing them There’s a lot of factors that go into that And there’s not really necessarily a scientific way that you can break down that Tomato seeds are good almost 100% germination to three years and then after that you lose 10% every year thereafter because it all depends on the tomato variety That depends on the the you know what all you’re planting and how that seed was kept because there are people like Mi Gardener who found seeds inside of a shadow box that they then grew and have now resurrected a lost variety of tomato This tomato seed was in a in a shadow box for 80 some odd years He took them out of that shadow box grew one to two plants out of those 10 or 12 seeds and now has a seed company where you can buy this seed because they have turned those two or three plants into more and more plants and they’re saving seed from them more and more every year and they’re resurrecting this this uh lost variety of tomato Now you’re if you’re a new beginning gardener you’re having a hard time growing certain things here’s a couple of things that I would suggest that you grow that are very easy to grow that don’t have a lot of natural pest and that will almost always give you results And those are okra beets herbs peppers green beans some type of a leafy green like a collard green or a mustard green things like that are very very easy to grow You’ll find a dozen different videos that will tell you a different dozen different things I actually have one of some of the easiest vegetables you can grow in a garden And those things are going to ensure that you get a harvest and you can grow these things and then you can grow some other that you don’t have a lot of experience at So if they fail then you’re not kind of uh you don’t feel like a failure because that’s the only thing that didn’t grow well this year All the rest of this stuff grew very well I can eat all of this and I don’t have to worry And probably one of the most things that I see posted on Facebook in groups especially by new gardeners is they show a plant that’s got yellowing leaves on the bottom of the stems and they’re like “What’s wrong with my plant?” There’s nothing wrong with your plant As your plant grows it creates shade and those leaves underneath that are not getting sun now going to die off the plant is not going to continue to give energy to those leaves because they’re not being productive The whole point of a plant pretty much any plant in your garden is to reproduce It can either reproduce through seed or through uh growing underground and creating another plant from the ryome that’s underground all of your plants are going to do whatever they need to do to make that happen So this is why we pick vegetables fairly frequently because once that plant decides that it has reproduced it will usually give up and not continue to grow So that’s why a lot of our fruits and vegetables are picked before they rot So if you have a tomato you’re picking that tomato at a prime time to cut it up slice it to eat it whatever you want to do with it If you let that plant grow and the seed goes to rot because that’s what happens usually is your seed in a in like a tomato that plant is going to grow and grow and grow that seed until it gets to a point to where it falls off naturally because it has reached a point to where it has started to be overright Once it has done that those seeds naturally grow inside of the fruit itself and next year as that fruit decomposes those seeds will come out So we don’t want to let a plant get to that because then it has figured out that it has reproduced And you’ll also see this with the cucumbers You’ll see a large cucumber that doesn’t look like the cucumbers you’re used to eating That’s one that’s gone too far It’s now overripe and it is now only good for seed You can’t eat it It will taste uh very kind of astringent Uh it’ll be very uh almost kind of mealy inside That cucumber is only good for seed and more than likely your cucumber plant will now stop producing more flowers and more cucumbers because it has reproduced It has made seed It is ready to give up on life this season because it has reproduced It has reached its goal in life So pick early pick often and continue to spur that plant on to grow Now another thing that I said a lot of times is new gardeners don’t want to thin their plant Now right here I have three tomatoes that are growing right next to each other Now I am going to dig up these three plants I’m going to separate them and I’m going to plant one here and two more back over there in another bed that I’ve got Now the other option would be to cut off two of these earlier on than what these are right now of course so that that one plant doesn’t have anything to contend with It doesn’t have anything to compete with So Whenever you’re planting seed if you have more than one come up if you don’t have the space to move it to transplant it cut it off and thin that plant away If not they’re both going to suffer You’re going to get mediocre results out of both of them instead of having one that’s going to produce really well because you would think that two plants equals twice as much produce But that’s not how it works because now you have two plants competing for the same amount of nutrients the same amount of water and the same amount of space And they don’t like to compete with other plants So thin your plants so that the ones that you do leave behind are going to be healthier happier and produce better for you Having a garden can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be You can go to a garden store or your local big box store You can buy all the soil that is formulated to grow the biggest the best everything And you can have the same issues as someone who has done nothing more than take their native soil and add some compost to it that their neighbor down the street made or they went to some guy who has horses and got some of their manure and added that to the soil And you can make growing vegetables and having a garden as cheap or as expensive as you want So don’t get looped into the fact that you need to have the best of everything that you need to have you know uh it won’t grow if I don’t buy this certain type of soil You know nothing’s going to grow if I don’t put this certain type of amendment in it You know there are a hundred ways to get to the point to where you’re picking vegetables the path that you want to take and your finances are what is going to push you down one path or the other Or you can just be like me and be cheap and not want to spend all that money and you built out your garden year over year and you have learned how to amend your soil with natural things that you can make yourself and you learn how to save money here or there either with materials or with repurposing things or with just having a mind that I don’t need that One of the other things that I see a lot of people worried about is growing organic They think that growing organic is expensive that it is more of a burden than growing other ways conventional ways I guess is the best way to put it But I tell you that’s not true The reason that when you go to the store and you see conventionally grown vegetables on one side and organic grown vegetables on the other side and one is way more expensive than the other it has to do with the fact of you have less fruit that is going to be pretty I guess is the best way to put it you’re going to have less vegetables that are marketable which is why they’re more expensive when you grow organic because organic you’re going to deal with pest more you’re going to deal with you know having to add certain types of fertilizers and to to kind of keep things more organic is a little bit tougher per se but it’s also a little easier if you want to look at it that way because instead of relying on chemical fertilizers and chemical uh pest killers and things like that you can rely on mother nature and the natural ways that it deals with pest the natural ways it deals with mineral and soil deficiencies You can do all this relatively inexpensive and you can actually grow bigger and better food organically than you can with your chemical fertilizers and your chemical pest deterrents and things like that As a beginning gardener probably one of the best tips that I can give you is to grow your soil not the vegetable What I mean by that is the more effort that you put into making your soil better the more that your plants will be happy the more that they will reward you for your efforts Don’t simply go to try and grow the vegetable or the fruit that you’re after go with the mindset that if you grow the soil the fruit will take care of itself You know there’s a couple of things that I can compare this to It’s kind of like with car guys if you build for torque horsepower will make itself you know um famous line from a movie if you build it they will come Kind of the same thing We’re not simply trying to grow vegetables We’re trying to make our soil healthier and happier so that our vegetables want to grow in it So guys I thank you for joining me today If what you information you had was good and helpful I want you to go down I want you to subscribe to me I want you to hit that bell icon notification and throw a comment down in the comments about either what you learned today what you thought was helpful or maybe you have a question that you want to have answered or maybe you’ve got some problem you’re dealing with that you want to see a video on I reply to all my comments I thank my all my viewers for for coming here and subscribing and doing these things because you’re help growing this channel day by day with each one of your subscriptions As always I ask you to pray over your family pray over your garden and have a great
1 Comment
Thanks for the tips