You’ve already done a lot of work to make your garden a success if you’ve been following our series on starting your garden. Except, of course, you are just reading it to pass the time or maybe during your lunch break at work. Don’t worry, we won’t judge.
Now that our gardens are ready for planting, it’s time to start the fun part of gardening: choosing what to grow. You don’t want to grab random seeds or starters and shove them in the ground. You don’t want to make a mess.
How to Select the Right Plants
Vegetables
When you are choosing the type of vegetable you want to grow, there are some key factors you should keep in mind.
How much space the mature plants will require, whether they need support or climb, and how much sun it needs.
Garden Size
Although these seem like common sense, they can be very easy to forget when buying small starters or seeds. Gardeners who are first-timers often purchase more than their garden can handle.
Plants grow. That is the most interesting thing. It’s shocking, I know. But, bear with me. Some plants are relatively small while others grow large and take up lots of garden space. For example, Zucchini can choke out other plants and take up significant space when it matures. Make sure you plan accordingly.
The direction of the plant growth
Many plants can grow vertically or climb, in addition to expanding and taking up more ground space. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this method. Vertical plants can take up a lot less space than traditional plants, but they can shade other plants in your yard, which could prevent them from getting the sun they need. You can place plants that require less sunlight or thrive in partial shade near your vertical plants.
Vertical plants require support.
Make a plan
It’s now time to pretend you’re a bank robber. Get out your graphing paper, and pencils and create a foolproof plan. Please don’t steal any banks.
Your garden will be drawn on graph paper. Start filling in the plants once they have grown in. To find out how large everything grows when fully matured, you will need to do some Googling. You might be surprised to find that you have a lot fewer plants than you thought. To minimize shade, you’ll want to align vertical plants.
Finally, find any climbing plants and take notes in the margins for any support that you might need.
It’s now time to get dirty. Do not get too excited. I mean, literally, dirt in the dirt. This blog is not for you.
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