How to Maintain Your Garden
You have done all the planning and the work to get your garden started. You may have followed our Garden Starter Guide or even purchased the DIY Garden Kit, and planted your plants, but what now?
It’s time to learn how to tend and maintain your garden for optimal health and growth.
Tending the garden
After you have sown seeds or transplanted seedlings, make a maintenance plan for your garden.
Start by determining what plant families your plants belong to. If you have no idea what I am talking about, read this post first, then come back here. Knowing the plant families helps you determine what kind of care each plant needs.
Next, gather or purchase fertilizers and amendments for the plants. Having it on hand will make it easier and faster to feed your plants when it is needed.
Then you create a calendar. In this calendar you will schedule when you will fertilize your plants. If you don’t want to create a calendar, our Garden planner is an excellent digital source to track everything you are planting, when you are feeding it, when to harvest and more. Check it out here.
Fertilizers
My favorite fertilizers I use are:
Compost: any compost will do (chicken, cow, mushroom) etc. for all nutrients (all-purpose)
Fish emulsion for nitrogen
Dr. Jimz Chicken Soup for the Soil: a great all-purpose fertilizer
Watering
One of the most important factors in tending your garden is watering properly. There are several guidelines to follow.
Issues watering the garden
Avoid over-watering your plants: regardless if they are water loving plants or not, no plant wants to sit in water. This will cause root rot then the plant won’t have the ability to grow because the roots are dead.
Don’t under-'water your plants: this is basically choking the life out of a plant. Water not only delivers moisture, it delivers the oxygen the plant needs.
Watering the leaves of the garden: this breeds disease and fungi which can spread to other plants.
How to water the garden properly
A good rule of thumb I use when watering my garden is to first check to see if it needs water. Stick your finger in the soil up to the second knuckle (the knuckle in the middle of your finger). If your finger tip is dry, then you need to water the garden.
Water until you see the water start to pool on top of the soil. Once you see that you can stop. However, if it takes more than a few seconds to soak into the soil, you may have a drainage problem and that is a completely different conversation. If you need help with this, schedule a coaching session and we can tell you exactly what to do.
Lastly, try not to get the leaves wet by watering at the soil level. Using a hose sprayer with a long neck is helpful. It can get underneath the leaves, straight to the soil.
Summary
Tending the garden does not have to be hard, you just need to know what to do. This post was just a glimpse into the what, but this plant guide is the how. It goes into what plant individual plants need as far as fertilizer, water, and sun. It also provides information on pests and how to rid of them.
Follow the instructions and you will do great! However, if you need a little more help or are not quite at the tending stage and need help starting a garden, book a consult or get the Garden Starter Guide or the DIY Garden Kit that comes with the Garden Starter Guide.
Happy growing!
