My Mom's Best Gardening Advice
By Martha Ferratusco + Genevieve Kavanaugh
Whether you own or rent your home, learning how to garden is a great way to bring life in and around your home.
Indoor plants do wonders for air purification, and outdoor gardening has its own long list of benefits. (Including Helping to Support the Bee Population)
When I think back to growing up, my childhood home was filled with color, vegetables, and fruit. Both of my parents took pride in their garden. They spent many early Spring and Summer mornings growing anything from Azaleas to Blueberries. We once had so many blueberries, there were piles of them sitting in our kitchen.
When I bought my own home, I knew very little about taking care of plants indoors, let alone growing them outdoors. When I needed advice, I turned to my Mother'.
Here are my Mother's top tips for creating the perfect outdoor garden.
Good soil
Add new loom if needed
Plenty of water and sunshine
I will let my Mom take it from here and break it down a little bit more.
Find A Sunny Spot
The first thing as a rule for planting is to find a spot where you get sunlight all day long.
Good loom and soil
Prepare a nice bed for your plants with the border or without, but the most crucial thing will be the soil. After you make sure that you have, you might want to section it off.
A good water source
Next, you also need to make sure that there's a way to water it every day.
Stay within your zone.
Plan your garden, whether it's vegetables or flowers. Pick ones that belong in your growing zone. It's not a good idea to grow something tropical in a zone where it might not thrive.
The rule of thumb in New England is after memorial day, we should be free of frost, and it's OK to plant even delicate flowers or vegetables.
Learning what zone you live in and learn the frost dates to help you plan.
Buy Both Perennials & Annuals
I'm partial to perennial gardens because those types of plants tend to come back year after year. Plus, you can usually move around the plants as they grow larger and separate them to fill in other areas of your garden.
What is important to remember with perennials is to learn which ones bloom during what part of the season. Some come up right away during Spring and others will come up during the Summer and bloom in the Fall. If you learn about these plants, you can have blooms every day of the gardening season.
During the growing season, I fill in between perennials with annual plants that you can grab from your local Home Depot Lowes or garden nursery or grow from seed. Annuals will not come back each year, so try not to spend a fortune on them.
Protect Your garden
I live in an area where we have animals that will eat our plants and vegetables. Which makes it disappointing to come out and see your plant is gone. Consider building containers or buying containers to put your precious vegetables and flowers in that way the rabbits and the deer don't eat them.
Feed Them
Lastly, I would think about feeding our plants with some nutrients regularly during the growing season. Having good soil and fertilizer helps your plants grow abundantly.