When you first start off gardening there’s a million things you don’t know. This is the normal way that people go into things and it’s important to learn through experience. Still, there are some really simple mistakes that you can avoid early on to save a ton of time and potentially even save a whole seasons crop.
1. Don’t just use any old dirt to plant your crops
Plants need nutrition to grow. While a bulk of the plant’s carbon comes from the air, it’s key essential nutrients come from soil and water. Planting in just any soil can sometimes work out, but usually it’s a recipe for disaster. Understanding if the soil you have is suitable for your crops involves fertilizing, pH testing, knowing if it is clay bound or sandy, and that’s just the start of things.
At the end of the day, the best bet is to always start by conditioning a new garden bed by bringing in high quality soil. It’s a bit more expensive and requires more work, but you’ll waste far less time and money on crops that just don’t grow in substandard soil.
2. Don’t Overcrowd Your Plants
Everyone wants to maximize their land usage, especially if they’re running and urban homestead or a tiny garden. While it is a good idea to use as much of your space as you can, it can be disastrous to think you can cram all your plants super close together. While some crops handle crowding just fine, most need a good amount of space between them to get any sort of usable yield out of the plant. Carrots, potatoes, and other root vegetables won’t grow very large and will grow misshapen if they are planted to closely together. Tomatoes that are too close together can fail to fruit or fall prey to blossom end rot as they compete for nutrients.
Each plant will have different space requirements for optimal growth. We recommend newer gardeners start on the higher spacing end of this range initially so that they can figure out the right tolerance for their plants. There are plenty of people out there loudly claiming you can crowd plants with the right nutrition, and you may be able to do so, but it is far from efficient and unless they outline the supplemental steps they take to make things work, it’s going to be better to play it safe.
3. Seed your Plants Indoors
A lot of new gardeners like to get seeds in the soil as soon as possible, but this can be both premature and shortsighted. When you are starting a garden, it’s rarely a good idea to start your seeds outside. While you can do this, you can waste a lot of time planting seeds that never come up or take far too long to germinate.
When you plant your seeds indoors in seed trays you are able to keep a careful eye on them. You have full control over their growing conditions and you have easy access to thin seeds as they come up. If you plant some duds, they just don’t make it to the garden taking up valuable space you could use for something else. Additionally, your seeds are protected from birds and squirrels so there’s less to worry about there.
On top of the seeds being in much better conditions starters that are grown indoors are typically healthier. When raise correctly they can be more sturdy and resist a couple bad days outside as opposed to seeds grown directly in the field that could die with one bad cold snap or an extra hot day.
Indoor starters are really only viable for homesteaders, but even still you can farm up to several acres with starter plants on your own labor. If you have have help from friends and family you can perhaps even do more. For us homesteaders with a greenhouse on the yard starters make even more sense as you can really scale up production.
All of this is a huge time save and ultimately will lead to better crops.
4. Don’t Over Water Your Crops
Daily watering is almost always bad for your crops. This seems counter intuitive as crops need water, but plants that are too wet can fall prey to disease, fail to develop deep roots, or even drown! Over watering is easily one of a new gardeners simplest mistakes because it doesn’t seem like a problem until it’s too late. One of the signs of over watering can wilting leaves and drooping stems, which is also the sign that a plant is under watered, so don’t be fooled.
The surest way to tell if you need to water your plants in to know how much water the plants need and check the soil to ensure it is moist enough. If you know how much the plant needs you can plan your watering schedule appropriately.
For most food crops you’ll grow watering once to twice a week is more than sufficient to produce excellent yields. In the rare exception that you’re growing crops that require a lot more water, planning out which plants you put where can help you keep your watering schedule together and make the production of raising happy healthy plants that much smoother.
5. A Failure to Plan Your Garden Is A Plan To Fail
Gardening, like everything else in life, rewards people for careful planning. Sure not everything goes to plan, but knowing what you’re going to plant, how your plants are watered, what type of fertilizer they needs, understanding compatible soil conditions, and really how much you can manage all plays into the overall success of your garden. Since nothing ever goes perfectly, you’ll have to adjust throughout the growing season, but if you know what your goals are and have a good amount of planning done upfront you can be adaptable to just about anything the garden throws at you.
Typically before you even pick out seeds you should take some time to visualize your space. Figure out how much you can grow and where and make sure you don’t need to adjust plots or move too much soil around. If this is your second season or later make a note of what you grew last year and ensure good crop rotation. When you do pick out your seeds, make a spread sheet of their needs and general information you’ll want on hand throughout the season.
If you plan everything right you’ll find you’ll have a much easier year than you might otherwise have encountered.
Avoid Simple Mistakes and Get a Jump on Your Homestead
Gardening and growing food to put on your table is one of the true joys of homesteading, but if that very first year gardening is a disaster it can turn you away from the lifestyle. Gardening is a lot of work, but it’s rewarding. There’s nothing better than eating a home cooked meal that you raised in your backyard! Avoid the mistakes we and many other gardeners out there made on their first attempts and get a head start on your homestead!