Deciding to create a garden is one of the best decisions that you'll ever make in life, but like anything along the way some things can trip you up so I'm going to show you just how to get around them one of my top tips is to always think like a beginner gardener one of my top tips is to always think like a beginner gardener never be afraid of asking questions ask your nana and pop your neighbors everyone loves to give help and you never stop learning I'm always learning and that's important.
It is very tempting to grab your wallet and whip out to the local nursery and buy everything in sight but that's precisely what you shouldn't do start small think about small quantities of things and where to put them you might find that over the years some plants do die but al least that give you an indication of plants that will survive and the whole things about this is that it's giving you experience and hence I more confidence this is a community garden and places just like this are where budding gardeners first put a fork into the ground one such gardener is my friend Isabel Robinson.
When I asked Isabel what got you into gardening she said well I've always been interested in growing my food and I don't have much of a sunny garden at home so I'm just trying to learn as I go by putting different edible things into this community patch so if you have any advice that you can offer I would appreciate it, well the first thing would be to know your limitations that's vital yeah you're down by the coast the community garden is right on the sea and so it's got very sandy soil and you have to keep adding into that sandy soil just so it keeps sort of absorbing.
All the nutrients so I've bought you a bag of something I would say every year late winter into spring it's nice and frieable What does friable mean it is like when you make a cake and you know how light and fluffy it is well this soil conditioner is made up of a lot composted bark and a bit of sand and you can see how it falls apart easily which means that there's a lot of air space in there and air's got oxygen in it.
And it's what the roots need to grow we forget what's under the ground and I see you've got a bit of horse manure in there which is just rotting down nicely everywhere you see that it's compacted just fork that over with a little trowel or a fork and then add this into it and you'll find it really will help a question I've got is what do I have room to plant like this apple tree how tall it is and it is really growing very wide and quite dominating It will have a fantastic crop on it you know productive wise but do you want your whole garden bad to be taken over by this one plant if you do that's fair enough.
But you might prefer just to have one like this that has got lots happening in it you know potatoes and silverbeet and golly all sorts of things the cabbage family kale follows on from having the space for things these broccoli are doing well because they have plenty of room to reach their maturity think about the final size of your crop it'll tell you on the speed packet or the plant label and the other thing is seasonality.
Have you noticed that when you plant things you end up with a glut I had way too many and I had to give them away and some of them went a bit moldy that's right you keep your eye out for just when they're right to pick if you can sow things so that you have a lot coming in then and then two weeks later plants some more so that they're going to be two weeks behind and you will get into that habit of just thinking about oh I can plant that can the that and you'll get that nice continual rather than everything coming at once?
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Is there a plant that would bring the bees in this is a very good question for a beginner because I would always suggest salvia they're easy to grow and they bring the birds and the bees and they need pruning once the flowers finish and they teach you how to prune so it's doing a good education job to grow a plant like a salvia how do I know where to put a particular thing in the garden I would suggest you take a photo so take a photo and take it around to some of the older members of the people here and ask them or take it down to your nursery and they'll be able to help you.
And don't forget the label will tell you the height and the width of the plant so you can go by that and also it tells you how much sun it will require a common thing for a beginner gardener to do is to over water plants now water is essential of course but you've got to have well-drained soil because if a plant is sitting in boggy saturated soil the roots are going to rot and you can easily get fungal disease on the leaves so make sure that soil is well aerated and nicely tilled up and you'll be fine now the same applies for fertilizer don't use too much just go with what it says on the label or the bag because if you overdo it you can often kill the plants and anyways you could be wasting that fertilizer it could just get leached out of the soil. So see you all soon I will upload my next blog very soon thank you for giving my blog your precious time.
This is my participation post for Initiative:MAY IN LEO