Do you want to start a garden, but literally have no clue? Do your eyes glaze over when you start to do your research but it gets too complicated? What are zones? How do you prep your soil? What should I plant? How do I keep it from dying?
You’ve come to the right place. In this post I’m going to give you a plan for making your own garden that has a good chance of success, all in simple language.
Let’s Get Started!
The very first step is to look up your garden zone for where you live. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where our zone is 3A. The good news for you, is that unless you live in the Arctic or the Desert, you’ll be able to follow my garden plan and have success.
Next, you’ll need to decide if you want to start any of your seeds indoors ahead of time, or if you want to purchase all your plants from a store. If you’re already overwhelmed, I recommend just buying your plants from a store the week before you plan to plant your garden. Buying a week beforehand is important, but we’ll get to that a little later on.
Want to start some seeds? I’ve got a guide to doing it without a grow light here. *If you do not have a south facing window, this will not be an option for you. In that case, you must have a grow light to ensure success.* For your first year of seed starting, I recommend only planting tomatoes. You need to start them 6-8 weeks before you intend to plant, which in my area tends to be the May Long Weekend (around May 21st). You can find a guide for last frost dates and when to plant here.
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The varieties of tomato I personally plant and recommend are beefsteak, early girl, lemon boy, and amish paste. You can plant any variety you like. Cherry tomatoes are a nice starter tomato that will do well in a container.
Soil Prep
The next step is to access your soil situation.
Are you planting in an already established garden space? All you’ll need to do is add a couple of bags of compost and manure, and arrange to get it tilled.
Is your space really overgrown, or are you starting from scratch?
If you are starting from scratch, you need to assess your light situation. Do not plant your garden near tall trees, as they will suck the moisture out of the soil and shade the garden. Sun loving vegetables need at least 8 hours of sun a day. More is better.
Once you’ve got that sorted out, hire someone to rototill the soil and remove all the clumps of grass or weeds. Wait a week and apply round up or some sort of weed killer to the weeds and grass that spring up. Wait until the weeds die and remove them. Add compost, manure and black earth to your soil, then hire someone to rototill again.
If you are not comfortable using chemicals, you can do this same process without the roundup. You can put cardboard, landscaping cloth, or even a tarp over the soil to kill off the weeds.
Even though you’ve done all that prep work, be prepared for there to still be a lot of weeds and grass this year. It takes a couple of years of diligent weeding to get the weed population down. You can surround your plants with grass clippings or wood chips to help keep your weed population down. There’s a whole school of thought on lasagna gardening and square foot gardening that is a great way to avoid weeds. It’s something I’d like to move towards, but for a beginner it can seem overwhelming.
You are now ready to plant your garden.
Pick your Seeds
There’s so many vegetables to choose from! What you plant this year will largely be determined by your personal tastes and how much space you have. Here’s what I recommend for your first year:
Potatoes: Potatoes come in a large package of smaller potatoes with white shoots growing out of the eyes. If you have potatoes around the house that are old and growing white shoots out of the eyes, don’t throw them away!! Cut them in half so that each half has at least one shoot. Dig as deep of a hole as you can and put the potato in. You will have to hill your potatoes once or twice in the season.
Onions: You can buy onions from seed packets, but I don’t recommend it unless you want green onions. If you want larger onions, buy the ones in the small bags instead. Onions require zero maintenance, just a quick weeding every so often.
Carrots: Carrots are easy to grow and fun to harvest. Thin them out (remove a few of the plants) a few weeks after you plant them for larger carrots in the fall. It’s best to leave your carrots in the ground for at least one frost, as they will be sweeter.
Peas & Beans: All peas and some beans require a trellis to grow on. You can use chicken wire, buy a trellis, or even make one with garden steaks and three rows of twine. If you don’t want to bother with a trellis, plant a bush variety of bean. Do not plant peas or beans if you will be away on a long vacation in the middle of July!!! They will get too hard if left too long, and all of your work will be for nothing.
Swiss Chard: I LOVE swiss chard. It wasn’t a vegetable I ate growing up, but it’s so much easier to grow than spinach and is pretty similar in nutrition and taste. Bonus, you don’t have to worry about bolting!! (When the new seeds come up and the spinach is no longer as good.)
Lettuce: Lettuce is easy to grow and there are tons of varieties to experiment with. I’ve had the best success with butter crunch lettuce. It’s easy to grow, slower to bolt, and has a texture I like. Plant 3 small sections of lettuce a week apart so you’ll have fresh lettuce all summer. Once you cut the lettuce it will grow back so you can eat it again. Just don’t let it go to seed!
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Zucchini: This plant is prolific, so only plant it if you like to eat it! I like to use it in bread, soups and tomato sauce, or wherever I need to sneakily add some nutrition. Do not ignore the direction on the seed packet to put 3 seeds in one spot. It seems weird, but the strongest plant will win out. Make sure to check your plant every 3 days once it starts producing. If you wait a week you will have a baseball bat on your hands.
Corn: Corn requires a bit of space, but is easy to grow. Plant 2 or 3 short rows verses 1 skinny one so the corn can pollinate. The rows should be 30 inches apart and the plants thinned out to 12 inches. You won’t get a decent amount of corn if you skip this step. Wear garden gloves when you’re planting, because all corn seed is treated.
Tomatoes: Tomatoes are the most labour intensive plants of this beginner garden. However, the taste of a fresh tomato or homemade sauce is well worth the effort!
Whether you purchase plants or start them earlier from seed, you’ll need to harden them off (put them outside during the day and take them in at night) for about a week before you plant them. (This is why you need to buy your plants a week ahead of time.) Do not place them in a super hot location just yet, and shelter them from the wind.
Each tomato will need a cage around it so the plant does not touch the ground when it’s bigger. If your tomatoes grow on the ground they will likely rot. You might also want to put a coffee can around the base of your cage. This protects your plant from the wind when its small, and helps support the plant when it’s mature.
Finally, for envy-enducing tomatoes, water once a week with Miracle Grow. There are many other ways to provide fertilizer for your plants, but Miracle Grow is the simplest when you’re just starting out.
Finally, in Saskatchewan you must pick your tomatoes before the first frost. This means that you will be picking most of your tomatoes green. Do not leave them out during a frost, or your whole crop will be ruined.
If you don’t like tomatoes or don’t think you’ll want to make any sauce, you might want to skip them your first year.
Plants I do not Recommend Your First Year
Peppers: I’ve never had great success with growing peppers and find that they die easily. Your first garden is all about building confidence!
Cabbage: Cabbage tends to split if it doesn’t get consistent water. A beginner gardener is more likely to be lax about watering.
Spinach: I’ve never had much luck growing it, and whatever manages to come up seems to bolt in about 2 seconds.
Pumpkins and Squash: Both pumpkins and squash are very easy to grow, but I’m assuming that you probably don’t have a lot of space. If you do have space, definitely give them a try. Word to the wise: one spaghetti squash plant produces 20 squashes.
Radishes: Radishes bolt quickly and are quick to turn woody. You need to be checking your garden everyday to pick them at the right time.
If you’re still feeling nervous, remember the wise words of my Mother-in-Law, “things grow.” She said this a lot to me last year as a fretted if I was “doing it right.”
Cucumbers: If you have a lot of space you can give them a try. For me they make this list because they need decent water and to be picked every 3 days once they start producing.
Plants of the brasica family: Kale, broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts are all especially prone to pests, especially if you live in a farming area like Saskatchewan.
Plant Families & Rotation
One last thing: some plants don’t grow well beside other plants. In a small first garden you probably don’t have to worry to much about this, but it is good to know about once you start expanding. You’ll also want to make sure you keep a map of what you planted so you can rotate your crops. It prevents disease and keeps your soil healthy.
Phew, that’s it! So get out there and get planting! Questions or advice? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
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