If you’ve never planted a seed or if you think it’s too late to start a garden, there are steps you can take TODAY to start growing some of the most delicious vegetables you’ve ever had in your life.
With food becoming more expensive and lower quality these days, there’s never been a better time to start learning how to grow it yourself. Regardless of economic pressures, learning how to nurture food crops is a worthwhile investment in fortifying the food security of yourself and your community.
Have Your Soil Tested
Soil testing is VERY IMPORTANT if you plan to grow food crops directly in the earth, rather than in a raised bed. In the ground, heavy metals, pesticide residues, and other contaminants can be absorbed through the roots, slowly accumulating in the plant’s tissues. Around areas with high levels of industrial activity, lead is an especially nasty contaminant that gardeners should avoid.
Do not cheap out on testing your soil for lead. Some organizations will even conduct lead contamination tests on your soil for free! Laboratories that test soil don’t just look for toxins, either. A wide world of insights can be gathered from a small sample of garden soil. Here is a short list of potential tests to consider:
- Basic soil profile Test – Reveals a soil’s pH, organic matter content, and NPK levels.
- Soil Fertility Test – Analyses a sample’s mineral content for long-term growth potential.
- Ribbon Tests – Uses gravity to splice the ratio of sand, silt, clay.
- Heavy metal / lead soil testing – For detecting lead and other hazardous heavy metals.
- Specific contaminant soil testing – An “à la carte” option to quantify other targeted toxins.
There is an even longer list of cheap and effective tests that can be done at home; however, keep the safety of everyone who might eat from your garden first and foremost.
Collect Seeds
In this modern age, shopping online from a reliable supplier is a great way to get quality seed varieties that grow true to type. My favorite seed supplier (and affiliate for this website), Botanical Interests, offers an extensive online catalogue. Their selection is curated for gardeners, by gardeners, with detailed resources on how to grow them to promote a successful harvest!
You need seeds to grow plants, of course. There are a handful of ways to acquire the seeds you need. Harvesting seeds from fruits/vegetables from the store is a worthwhile effort. Harvested seeds need to be cleaned, dried, and then stored in a dark place for long-term storage. Just make sure to avoid the seedless varieties and be aware that some produce is genetically altered to not grow true-to-type when replanted.
The library is another option for getting seeds that is, ABSOLUTELY 100% FOR FREE, depending on your library’s policy. For example, my local library offers a seed library for library cardholders. Here, you can choose from a huge variety of food crops and flowers. A maximum of 15 seed packets may be checked out per month, but you can mix and match these packets however you like.
Open a gardening book
Speaking of the library, growers of all backgrounds have been passing on their trade secrets through books for years. Especially when I first started gardening, having a physical resource to reference really helped accelerate my personal learning.
Gardening books do not have to be expensive or even brand new to be a worthwhile investment. In fact, I still own a copy of “The Complete Guide to Gardening” by Better Homes and Gardens, which I picked up at a thrift store for less than $5. It serves as a fantastic reference point for crop information and creative landscape inspiration.
Every book offers something a little different, so don’t settle for just one. Some books specialize in specific aspects of horticulture, like “The Gardener’s Helper” by the editors of Organic Gardening Magazine, a handy DIY guide catered to organic gardening. For more abstract concepts, “The Secret Life of Plants” by Tomkins and Bird explores the many ways that plants have impacted humanity’s ecological and sociological development. I highly recommend this read for a whimsical dive into the undeniable relationship between people and plants.
Make a garden plan
Every great garden starts with a plan and the will to see it through. First and foremost, find the length of your growing zone to understand when your first/last frost dates occur. Next, whether you have a backyard, a basement, a balcony, or a windowsill, I encourage you to make the most of your space to grow something. ANYTHING. In my opinion, preferably somewhere with access to at least 6 hours of direct sunlight.
Once you find the space, list the plants that you’d like to grow, then narrow that list down to what your space will accommodate. For example, growing lettuce and microgreens in a grow tent is much more rewarding than growing watermelons, which require much more light, nutrients, and space than most other crops.
Then you’ll need to know how long your ideal plants will take to grow and mature into harvestable food. All of this information can be estimated from information on the seed packet. If there is a specific date that you’d like to harvest your plants, use this formula:
(Target date – (weeks to sprout + weeks to maturity) = Seed starting date)
Once you understand how long it takes to grow your desired crop from seed, you can plan out a succession planting strategy, which yields a more continuous harvest throughout the year. For example, I can produce 3-4 medium harvests of radishes in my region’s growing zone instead of one cumbersome and large harvest.
Gather Containers
This one is specific to container gardens. If money is a concern, I beg you, DO NOT go straight to the big box stores for pots to grow in. There are much cheaper alternatives. Most of the pots from that garden came from local thrift stores for under $2, and I’m still using them to this day.
What could be better than scoring a planter for a great deal? Scoring a planter for absolutely nothing is the right answer. That’s right: if you are part of a community garden or have friends who are also into gardening, ask them politely for a few planters. The chances are in your favor that they’ll say, “Heck yes!”
Garage sales are another way to get a great deal on gardening supplies. Always keep an eye out for those tell-tale garage sale signs around the neighborhood, and you just might strike gold on the other side. At one garage sale, they sold me as many grow bags as I could carry for just $5, which are just the right size for growing acorn squash.
Start a compost pile
All it takes is one cubic meter (1m x 1m x 1m) and an afternoon of sourcing materials to build an effective compost pile. This specific size is the minimum space recommended for effective outdoor composting. Great compost is made from layers of greens, browns, and “party-starting” materials. The party-starting materials are those that are particularly high in nitrogen and simple sugars, like coffee grounds and expired candy.
Limited on space? A worm bin could be the method for you. Worm bins take a fraction of the food of a standard compost pile. They generate liquid fertilizer on demand AND more worms to throw in your garden beds over time.
Or better yet, you can skip the middleman and build a composting section directly into your gardening bed. By placing food scraps into the designated compartment, the worms and other decomposers will find it on their own, creating a fertility hotspot.
COOK/EAT MORE VEGETABLES
Eating homegrown food is a massive part of the joy that gardening brings. It is a good idea to focus on growing crops that you actually enjoy eating as motivation to continue cultivating those plants. Along the way, try experimenting with different herbs, both foreign and domestic.
The world of edible plants is vast and delicious. If you need a place to start, start with a cookbook. Or even better, contact your local vegetarian friends for a potluck. Alternatively, vegans on YouTube are screaming from the mountaintops about the latest and greatest plant-based goodies.
Once you’ve found a particularly tasty leafy green, you have some research to do. Find out which parts of the plant are edible, how often they flower during their life cycle, and how to harvest the fruits of your labor.
Identifying local weeds and foragables
Speaking of harvests, have you ever considered eating the weeds in your yard? You could be overlooking some particularly nutritious plants without realizing it. To the untrained eye, wild mustard, dandelion greens, onion grass, and lamb’s quarter are all considered weeds. I consider them delicious.
A word of caution: Never eat a plant that you or a professional cannot identify with 100% certainty. There are just as many plants that are dangerous or even deadly to eat as there are edible and nutritious ones. Also, avoid plants that have been exposed to pesticides. Personally, I only use weedy plants that pop up in my garden beds for food to minimize my risk to external factors.
Beyond the safety precautions, weeds can be an incredibly flavorful (AND FREE) to diversify your diet in ways that you simply won’t find in the grocery store. My favorite way to eat foraged greens is to incorporate them into my favorite meals. Ramen noodles suddenly become a super food when I add fresh radish, mustard flowers, and pea shoots to the broth. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!
Get some tools
Handy gardening tools that you’ll definitely want to start with include:
- Gardening gloves
- A hand trowel
- A claw digger
- A spaded shovel
- A watering can
- A hose (with sprayer attachment)
- A pitchfork
- A wheelbarrow
Many of these tools are ubiquitous enough that you might already have some of these lying around the house. If not, I would check the thrift stores before running to the hardware store. Even gardening tools are getting more expensive these days. In fact, a quality pair of working gloves is the only thing I would seriously consider buying brand new.
Ultimately, the secret to saving money on gardening infrastructure is to build it yourself. If you have the tools, put them to work! Your space could probably use some extra growing beds, trellises, irrigation systems, hydration stations for the pollinators, and much more. Whatever you build, build it to last as an asset that will survive multiple seasons.
Germinate Some Seeds
Starting a seed is not complicated. All you need is water and a medium to hold the seed while its first cotyledons (baby leaves) germinate. Some seeds germinate better when exposed to light, like lavender and lettuce. Other seeds require complete darkness, like borage and cilantro. Sometimes seed packets will have extra detailed information on proper care. Follow those instructions or do your own research until you have enough experience to develop your own preferred method.
Personally, I prefer to start transplantable crops in plastic trays. This setup is ideal for bottom-watering seedlings by placing them in recycled nursery pots and letting them float on the water. It also makes it much more convenient to organize and carry up to 18 occupied nursery pots at once.
Some crops even prefer to be planted directly into the soil. Direct sowing seeds like carrots, cucumbers, and squash is ideal, since these crops have shallow and/or sensitive root systems that especially don’t like to be disturbed once established.
Closing Remarks
I want to add “Make Gardening Friends” as an honorable mention. Growing food is just as much about building community. The connections and knowledge to be gained from the people around you are worth so much more than anything you find on display at the stores.
Much of the joy that gardening brings comes from sharing the wealth of your harvest, so feed your friends and your neighbors. Starting a garden from square one can be daunting, with the vast amount there is to learn, but you’ll be glad you got started when you can finally reap the benefits of all that planning and hard work. Someday, people might even ask how you got so abundant, and I hope you’ll help them take the first steps toward building a garden of their own.
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