Tips for Building the Ultimate Home Garden
A home garden is one of the best additions to your home that quickly becomes the gift that keeps on giving. From chives and raspberries to roses and watermelons, the home garden of your dreams is easier than you may think. Before you begin building your own home garden, you should:
- Pick your plants
- Decide on a garden location
- Gather the gardening tools you’ll need
- Decide if you’ll start from seeds or transplants
- Prep your soil
- Plant your seeds
Here are some gardening tips to help start your home garden and how to maintain it throughout time with Go Store It.
Pick Your Plants
Before you start building your DIY home garden, first think about the types of fruits, vegetables, and plants you’d like to grow. If you’re interested in cooking and healthy eating, consider planting fruits and vegetables you eat and cook with often. Some of the most common fruits and vegetables beginner gardeners grow include apples, berries, watermelon, tomatoes, carrots, kale, lettuce, and cucumbers. If you just want some blooming flowers to beautify your yard, beginners enjoy growing sunflowers, pansies, marigolds, portulacas, and more.
Be sure to consider the climate zone you live in when choosing the plants you want to grow; some plants won’t thrive in certain climates. The USDA created a helpful Plant Hardiness Zone Map that helps you determine which plants will thrive in your specific climate zone. It shows the minimum temperature that plants will thrive. Try to consider these zones before choosing the plants you’d like to grow.
Decide on a Location
Next, you’ll want to survey your yard and decide on the best location for your home garden. If you’re planting fruits and vegetables, it’s best to plant them in your backyard to keep them safe from people and animals walking by. On the other hand, if you are building a garden of flowers, don’t be afraid to showcase them in your front yard for all your neighbors to admire.
Find a place that has plenty of sunshine. If you grow your garden in a dark and shady area, it won’t have the opportunity to thrive properly. Also, be sure that your garden has easy access to water. If you plan to use a hose to water your garden, make sure the hose can reach it with no problem.
Finally, make sure that you have a flat space to work from. If you don’t have a lot of space to work with, consider using containers. Using containers like buckets or pots is a great way for beginners to create and experiment with home gardens.
Gather Your Gardening Tools
You can’t create the ultimate home garden without the proper gardening tools. Before you start planting, gather the gardening tools you’ll need. Some of the basic tools you’ll need include:
- Gardening gloves: Gardening isn’t pretty at times. Protect your hands from scrapes and blisters with a good pair of gloves.
- Hand shovel: You’ll be using a hand shovel a lot to dig small holes, get rid of weeds, and more.
- Hand fork: A hand fork, or cultivator, is great to use when roughing up the soil.
- Garden hoe: A garden hoe will come in handy when breaking up clumps of soil and removing weeds from your garden.
- Rake: A quality rake will help you smooth out your soil for a flat and uniform surface.
- Watering can: If your garden is out of reach of a water source, a watering can is a helpful tool to have to water your plants with free range.
- Garden scissors: When your plants have bloomed and it’s time for you to enjoy them, garden scissors will make it easy to cut leaves and stems.
These tools are essential to creating your home garden. Of course, you can expand and get knee pads, wheelbarrows, and other tools, but these are the bare necessities you’ll need.
Determine if You Will Use Seeds or Transplants
When creating your garden, you have a few options: You can either start completely from scratch and plant seeds, or you can get a little head start by planting transplants. Neither option is better than the other—it’s all preference. Just keep in mind that planting seeds is a much longer process than using transplants.
Prep Your Soil
Good soil is the key to a plentiful garden. There are many different types of soil to choose from, ranging from in-ground soil to potting soil and indoor soil. One of the best types of soil we suggest you use is sandy loam soil. Sandy loam soil is a mixture of sand, clay, and silt soils and helps keep your plants healthy.
To prepare your soil, pour it as evenly as you can into your designated garden area. Next, use your shovel to loosen up the soil and get rid of any large chunks. Smooth the surface with your garden hoe, and you’re ready to start planting.
Plant Your Seeds or Transplants
Finally, it’s time to plant your seeds or transplants. Most seed packets come with instructions that tell you exactly how deep to plant them. Be sure to follow these directions, as every plant type is different. It’s also important that you leave enough room in between each plant to ensure each plant gets the proper amount of water.
Speaking of water, make sure you water your plants regularly. It can be difficult to determine exactly how much water your plants need, but as a rule of thumb, water your plants until the soil is moist, not soggy.
Enjoy Your Ultimate Home Garden
After a few weeks of caring for your garden, you’ll slowly start to see it blooming into the fruits, flowers, and vegetables you love. When your fruits and vegetables are ripe and ready, cut them from the stems using your garden scissors and share them with family and friends.
After the gardening season is over, easily stow away your garden tools in a self storage unit with Go Store It. With plenty of locations all across the country, we provide 5×5 units perfect for garden tool storage. Our flexible month-to-month leases make it easy for you to store your tools during the offseason and take them back out for the next gardening season! Find a Go Store It storage facility near you and build your ultimate home garden today.