Tips for Successful Gardening

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Once you have figured out what you are planting and where these few tips will help with other things. How much sun do your plants need? How to be prepared for mold and how to week your garden. Gardening shouldn’t be stressful or something you dread. However, it can be a lot of work. Knowing all you can know is one of the first tips for successful gardening.

Calculating the Amount of Sun Your Garden Will Get

Whenever you plan your garden, there are a few things you need. Make sure that you have the space and soil. Also, the water and nutrients your plant needs. You also have to take into account how much sunlight it should get.

This should be clearly stated on the seeds that you purchase. For example, if you’re looking to grow tomatoes, it will most likely say that it needs full sun to thrive. That means your plant should get anywhere from 6-8 hours of sunlight per day.

Some vegetables will require less, such as partial or low sunlight. The partial sun would be 4-6 hours per day, and the lower sun would be 1-4 hours per day. If you’re growing indoors and using your window, you can supplement your plant’s sunlight by using grow lights inside.

Soil Temperatures

The sunlight corresponds in certain ways to the soil temperatures, too. Maybe you have a relatively shaded area, and the required soil temperature is high. This may not work well when growing food in that spot.

Do you have a lot of shade? If so, you might consider focusing on root and leaf vegetables, which can get by with less sunlight. Most vegetables will need plenty of sunlight to thrive, including vegetables like melons, squash, and cucumbers.

Tracking Sunlight

To estimate how much sun a spot gets in the area where you plan on growing food, you’ll want to track the sunlight to see how much it provides. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

It’s going to be strongest between the hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. Those six hours are crucial to the development of a strong plant. Go outside and mark where the sun is exposing the ground during those hours. Now try to plan in that area.

Be sure to watch out for areas that might accidentally get shaded by things like a tool shed or a fence surrounding your yard. You might assume something is in a sunny spot, but when you actually track it, you see that the plant would be suffering from a lack of sunlight in that area.

Container Gardening

Of course, if you’re using containers outdoors, you can always manually move the pots to correspond with the lighting situation. However, this is cumbersome and only recommended for those who want a hands-on approach with more involvement. Unlike a few years ago when we were limited on container choices for planting a patio garden, we now have many choices to pick from. This includes potting systems designed to grow larger amounts of food in a small area: Premium Rain Barrel.

Being strong and having time to follow the sun is adding extra time to your gardening. Not everyone is home all day to do this type of chasing the sun.

If you don’t have time to track the sun, there are gadgets, like sunlight calculators. Place them in and around your yard that will help you determine how much sunlight a specific spot gets throughout the day.

Be Sure to Weed Your Garden to Allow Your Plants to Grow

Growing a garden can be filled with many wonderful moments, such as your seed sprouting or the first sign of a vegetable growing on your plant. But there are some tasks you have to take care of that aren’t as pleasant.

Some of those have to do with pests or a fungus developing on your plant. But one that’s just part of the routine you take on as a gardener is weeding the garden. This allows your vegetable plants to thrive.

When weeds are present in your garden bed, they’re sucking the nutrients and hydration away from your vegetable plant. You don’t want anything leeching off of your plants. Whether it’s an insect nibbling at the leaves or a weed whose roots are not allowing your garden to succeed.

Weeding the First Time

The first bit of weeding you’ll be doing, which is the hardest, is thinning out your sprouts. You will usually need to plant more seeds than you’ll use to ensure that space has a sprout that pops up.

But leaving too many sprouts in that place allows the same thing that happens with weeds, two plants competing for the same nutrients. Once you’ve chosen the sprout to leave in place, you’ll want to continually watch for weeds to pop up around it so that you can pull it immediately.

If you wait and procrastinate the task of weeding, that weed gets stronger and harder to remove. Some people make the mistake of thinking their plant can survive it. But even if it does, having to harvest a garden with produce tangled up among weeds will be difficult for you.

Routine Weeding

This is not merely an aesthetic task to keep your garden looking nice. It needs to be done routinely. Some people avoid it because they have a difficult time getting up and down in their garden.

You can buy stand-up weeder tools to make the task much simpler. The best thing about them is that they get to the root of the weed and remove it. When you weed your garden by hand, you have to make sure you’re taking it out down to the root. If you don’t, it will simply pop right back up.

If the weed is growing close to your plants, make sure that you’re carefully removing them. Do it carefully to not disturb the root system of your vegetable plants in the process. As you pull them out, add some mulch to the garden to help prevent more weeds from popping up.

Dealing with Mold and Mildew on Your Vegetable Plants

There’s nothing more defeating than taking time to nurture and grow your vegetable plants, only to find that in spite of your care and attention, they’re plagued with mold and mildew.

Powdery mildew is a problem many gardeners encounter. But it doesn’t have to ruin your vegetable garden. If you can commit to taking action to eliminate it or manage it, so it doesn’t cause damage to your plants.

It’s not anything that will immediately kill your vegetable garden. However, it will cause a deterioration in the health of your plants. The leaching of nutrients and causing the leaves to shrivel up and turn yellow.

Dealing with Mildew – Tips for Successful Gardening

Mildew is a fungus that affects just about all plants you want to grow in your garden, so you need to be able to identify it so that you can address it when and if it appears. If you notice that your plant suddenly looks like it’s covered in powder on the leaves, stem, or flowers, that’s a sign of mildew.

One thing you want to do is see if you’ve given your plants enough room to grow. Sometimes, people crowd their garden so tight with plants that the air doesn’t circulate properly, contributing to the humidity and mildewing of the plants. This is where weeding comes into play, like I addressed above.

Plenty of Sun

This was already addressed above but is a very important tip. You want to make sure your garden is getting plenty of sun. If plants are growing in too much shade, they could worsen the mildew problem. You also want to take care to get your soil conditions just right for growing, not overly dry or too saturated with fertilizer.

If you’re constantly dealing with mildew issues, then make sure you invest in some of the preventative products that are on the market to help stave off this type of disease and keep your garden healthy.

Once the powdery mildew appears, you’ll have to try to remedy the situation. There are a variety of solutions people swear by, including vinegar, milk, baking soda, mouthwash, and Neem oil.

Every Plant is Different

Not every plant responds the same in every climate to these quick fixes, so you may have to test them out to see what works best on your vegetables. Mildew is going to thrive in dry, warm climates, so even water can sometimes help to remove the mildew.

While most plants are susceptible to this issue, you’ll find it on plants like cucumbers, lettuce, potatoes, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini plants more often. The spores can spread with the wind, so try to catch and treat them early on to protect the rest of your crop.

Final Thoughts on Tips for Successful Gardening

Being consistent with these tips will help your garden thrive properly. While not always fun to deal with, weeding is a must for proper growth. Sunlight is important for overall growth. Also, vegetables taste better when they get the sun they need.

Enjoy gardening and the final results, like a freezer full of veggies or canned veggies. Being able to each foods year-round that you grew is very rewarding.

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