Grow Your Own Food This Spring
What’s Up Everyone!
If you’re needing some motivation to try your hand at gardening this year, then this article is for you. I have some tips to help you succeed even if you don’t have a green thumb.
If you are interested in an in-depth gardening guide you can read my guide starting here. This was a guide for paid subscribers last year, sign up as a paid subscriber now so you don’t miss anything!
PS. If you need seeds I got you fam!
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I want to thank you guys for your support, especially the paid subscribers! You guys mean alot to me. If you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out on twitter, or by email bowtiedfarmer@protonmail.com, I’ll help you any way I can, and I mean it!
Now, I know for some of you, there’s still snow on the ground and are laughing at me for talking about starting a garden. Sorry, there’s no white stuff anywhere around me so I’m talking about gardening today! haha
So, here are some thoughts on the upcoming gardening season.
Seeds and Seedlings
It’s a well known fact that your odds of success increase tremendously by planting a healthy seedling when compared to planting seeds directly in the soil outside in the harsh elements. Some crops do well starting from seed outside, and some do not.
We’ll talk about which crops grow easily from seed shortly. For the onese that do not grow well from seeds directly in soil, you are left with two options.
You can buy seedlings or or you can start your own seeds indoors. Seedlings can be bought at any garden store usually starting in early spring. They will carry all of your typical garden vegetables.
If you are a beginner gardener, don’t be scared to simply buy a few plants from the store and put them into containers for your porch. You can easily plant them into a raised bed or straight into the ground out back as well.
This will give you some good experience learning how to garden without the hassle of starting seeds or planting seeds directly with not much luck.
However, it’s important to note that seeds are cheaper than seedlings. Growing from seeds will also allow you to pick from a huge online selection with thousands of different varieties of vegetables. You can even go on ebay and get into some really exotic plant varieties.
If you would like to try gardening by putting a seed in dirt out back or in a container on your porch just to see what happens, here are the crops I recommend.
Herbs (basil, chives, cilantro, and dill)
Squash
Cucumber (require lots of space or trellis)
Okra
Beans (i recommend “bush” beans for small gardening or beginners)
Corn (require lots of nitrogen, may not actually produce corn)
Beets/Radish/carrots/turnips
Chard/lettuce/spinach
Potatoes (not a seed like you would think, you put the whole potatoe in the dirt)
It’s important to remember that what may grow well for me, may not grow well for you. So you must try a wide variety until you figure out what works good for you. Or find someone in your area that has knowledge and find out what they grow, and copy pasta!
Starting Seeds
If you want to try your hand at sprouting seeds indoors, here is a good detailed guide.
A cheaper option for an indoor grow light would be something like this:
This is a basic setup I’ll be using with the heat mat and seed tray from vivosun. I’ll use it for a couple of vegetables and flowers that I am pretty sure aren’t going to come up from seed out in the dirt. We’ll see how this set up works, and I’ll try to update ya’ll on it.
Seed Sprouting Setup
Seed Tray Area
The biggest problem I run into starting seeds is patience and proper set up. You’re dealing with tiny seeds which require steady hands. You’re also dealing with potting soil and tiny trays, this will make a mess quickly.
It’s best to have a dedicated area to start your seeds, preferably with a table so you can take your time and fill the trays with potting soil and carefully place the seeds. A table will keep most of the potting soil contained for easy clean up.
Something like this looks cool, but could easily just use an old table from the house. I like this one below because it looks light so you can move it from inside to outside easily if needed.
It could be really cheap junk though, hard to tell on some of this type of stuff buying online.
Once you have the trays filled with seeds, you need a place out of the way to leave them with the light and timer set. It would look something like this. Probably best to place the light directly above the tray so that the sprouts aren’t bending over towards the light.
Hardening Off Your Plants
Once they get to be larger sprouts, they must be transferred into larger pots and then “hardened off.” This is another pain point because it requires very gentle hands moving the delicate seedlings without damaging the root system. (I’m kind of like a bull in a china shop lol)
You will also need a good place outside to set the plants for a few hours and then bring them back inside each day. Last year I put my plants outside on my front porch and my dog would take the pots of plants off and dump them out! rugged again.
If you’re a beginner, I recommend starting small with just a couple of seeds/plants because it requires a lot of space once the seedlings are transferred to larger pots.
I’m late getting my seeds started this year, so I’ll plant a bunch of seeds directly into my soil out in the garden area and pray. If some of the seeds don’t sprout in the ground, I’ll hopefully have some seedlings ready to transplant in the next few weeks.
What to grow
If you’re limited on space you’ll be growing in small pots or containers. I recommend these grow bags. You can easily grow crops in some grow bags on a small balcony. This would be a chad move if you were single, your friends and potential wife would really be impressed when they visit and see you’re a gardener.
It’s a fun hobby and you never know, you might get bit by the bug like I did and become obsessed with growing vegetables. It’s addictive!
Container Gardening
The best crops for container gardening depending on the size of the container (depth of soil):
4-5": chives, lettuce, radishes, other salad greens, basil, coriander
6-7": bush beans, garlic, kohlrabi, onions, Asian greens, peas, mint, thyme
8-9": pole beans, carrots, chard, cucumber, eggplant, fennel, leeks, peppers, spinach, parsley, rosemary
10-12": beets, broccoli, okra, potatoes, sweet corn, summer squash, dill, lemongrass, sweet potatoes (make sure it’s a bush or vineless variety)
Farmer’s Favorites
Here is a list of some vegetables I ordered the other day. They will all work in a container garden, a raised bed garden, or out in the ground. (I also have a gigantic stash of seeds collected over the years that I’ll be planting as well)
Tomatoes - I like cherry tomatoes. The big tomatoes can be a pain to get them all the way to ripe before pests or wind destroy them. The cherry tomatoes are easier and produce tons of fruit, you only need one or two of these plants.
Bush Beans - I like bush beans because they don’t require a trellis to grow on and they still taste great and can produce a nice bounty. I would plant 5 bush bean plants per person in your family if you you have room.
Beets/radish/carrots - These can be planted early spring as soon as the garden bed is workable. Make sure the soil is nice and soft, you can’t really have too many of these in my opinion. Space them out about 6” apart from one another and plant as many as possible.
Brassica Plugs - I bought a brassica plug collection containing kale, cabbage, broccoli, collards, and cauliflower. I bought these to get a jump on the growing season, as soon as they arrive, I’ll pop them right in my garden soil. These plants don’t produce much per crop, so you can’t have too many of these growing in my opinion.
Sweet Potatoes - I also bought some sweet potato slips because I’m lazy and didn’t feel like starting my own from potato seeds. When they arrive, I can just plant them immediately.
Beneficial flowers and herbs - Marigolds, Citronella grass. Lemongrass. Marigolds. Chrysanthemums. Petunias are just a few of the “beneficial” plants that attract good pests to your garden to help control the bad pests. You can read more on natural pest control here.
This list will get you a good mix of vegetables without requiring a ton of space, or added work building trellis. Again, experiment with what works for you and ask around to find out what others grow in your area.
Now let’s crush this weekend 😤
WAGMI
Farmer