Author: Kevin Burness Date Posted:20 August 2021
Are you wanting to achieve garden and plant success this spring?! Whether you are starting a garden or improving one, these simple spring gardening tips will help!
Simple Spring Gardening Tips!
The idea of a garden or gardening is to enjoy it! So it’s a good methodology to follow a few basic principles when it comes to getting out in the yard.
Throughout this blog, I’ve listed some great steps for starting or improving a garden and I always tend to fall back on these principles when helping others solves garden issues.
Welcome to successful and simple gardening! Especially for spring!
Consider the sun aspect
The most important factor to consider is the aspect of the sun for the site of the garden. This alone has the greatest importance in the planning of gardens. Good questions to tackle are:
Aspect is truly important and can determine what type of plants will thrive. With bright morning sun, there’s a lot of options. But afternoon sun is different, where tougher plants are better suited. Otherwise, we need to create some relief from the scorching sun.
Water and drainage.
Water is precious and essential for keeping plants alive, until you have way too much! Look at the site of your garden and see if you can determine where water will move, rest and settle. Creating a garden that uses water efficiently and effectively is important, but we also need to ensure we’re not setting ourselves up for trouble when extreme rainfall arrives.
Checking soil health
Hopefully you have some soil and not just dirt, rocks or hard clay! We need to know what we’re working with, so a bit of exploration is required here. A great way to start any garden is checking your soil by digging down and assessing the soil quality.
In my experience, it’s rare to have naturally humus rich soil, but one can dream right! Most places need soil improvement, and you can either work with what you’ve got and improve it slowly or you can buy in bulk if you want a head start.
Either way, it’s important to continue caring for and improving the soil! This can generally be achieved by adding organic matter and compost to the soil, and this is an easy practice we can work on. Remember, the more you put into your soil, the more results you will see in the plants, gardens and even lawns.
Cover the soil
Mulching is a must! This is a simple practice that protects the soil from extreme weather and provides a comfortable habitat for the soil life. Any organic matter-based mulch is better than nothing and there’s a lot of options available. The style of the garden and personal preference play a big role in mulch selection, but my best advice is to keep it simple.
While there is the option to apply mulch after all the plants are in, I find it much more efficient to cover large areas and protect the soil and then plant. Personally, I love large chunky bark type mulches that have irregular and warped shapes as they work great in the long run and in larger gardens. They also break down very slowly but still let moisture and fertilisers through easily.
For my vegetables, I use grassy and hay type mulches as they are easy to move around the veggies and break down faster to improve the soil’s health.
Climate and microclimate
My best advise here is to be realistic – don’t grow plants that are not suited to your climate! Take a look at the weather you experience and focus on the extremes. Do you experience extreme heat during the summer? Is it cold enough to get frosts during the winter? Consider the humidity and prevailing winds and how they affect the garden - these are the elements that will see your plants thrive or die!
Plant selection and garden styles
For many, this is a first and only step when it comes to gardening – which is why I’ve popped it at the bottom of the list. Not because it’s not important, but because the preceding steps will help increase the health and resilience of your garden and plants.
The earlier steps should have helped identify any limitation factors, which you need to take into account before plant selection, and now we can start to plan our garden environment!
This is where we can start playing around and creating our own personal plant world! AKA, the fun part! Research on your plants, this includes googling and reading labels. Don’t be lazy with this step and select something because it’s pretty, because it might not be right for your environment.
Information on plants is easy to find and can save you heartache and money when the plant outgrows a spot, needs more sunshine or perishes. Do your research and identify plants that will work in your climate before committing to something that will struggle in your space. There’s enough varieties of plants available that you can still work towards many styles or looks and change out plants for something that thrives in your space.
Even finding a local Facebook garden group can be helpful to see what other people are having success with or what plants tend to flounder.
What now?
So you've made a garden, planted all of these beautiful plants, what now? The key here -
stay inspired! Keep it simple but remember to keep up the care and maintenance of your garden.
Good gardens are an infinite project. It’s disheartening to see many people start gardening but let setbacks or roadblocks ruin their endeavours. Even simple things such as walking around the gardens daily, observing changes and staying on top of little issues will help.
Fertilisers and amendments are vital throughout the year. Watering, mulching and weeding are a must. But shift your mindset from this being a chore to you maintaining a beautiful space that you can continue to love and improve. These physical jobs are also great exercise for the mind and body.
Gardening is a skill and as you practice that skill you will improve. Stick with it and keep it simple!
Kevin Burness.
@simplegardening
I'm just an experienced and awesome gardener sharing my own personal opinions. These are all my approaches and opinions I use in my gardens. I don't have any pieces of paper to tell me how to garden but I do have years of experience and a big, amazing garden that backs me up. I give general advice from my experiences. If you like it, use it. If not, no problem.
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