New gardeners need help!

My partner and I have always wanted to have a garden. Also we recently realized (with all the craziness we've seen going on in the world) we should be more self-reliant. We quickly got overwhelmed with all the information out there and are hoping for some more specific help. Therefore we hope to get some responses to our specific questions about our garden and we put them in a video (link below).

Please help us have gardening success!
Thank you very much,
Fendi and Eric (just two simple gardeners)



Advice in the video comments as well would be very helpful, thank you!

 

Welcome to our group! Now that you have joined, this is your group too from today. So please, feel totally at home.

I myself also believe in being able to sustain yourself. Many people use to laugh at me behind my back when they would learn that I was doomsday prepping - However, nobody is laughing anymore...

Yes, everybody use to laugh, except for the people over here. Because everyone in this place online is either a farmer, a homesteader, or an urban gardener. On top of that, everyone is extremely friendly, and always ready to assist.

I am getting ready right now to head out and get some supplies, (as now is the only time when the COVID-19 curfew is relaxed for a few hours) - But when I'll return, I will share with you all that I know.

 

OK, back from shopping now, phew...

So to answer your questions one by one now.

No you don't really need to do much to the soil. Yes it would be better if you did, but I wouldn't recommend anything which might be labor intensive - Because you guys are starting out now. So I say let's not do anything which might accidentally kill off the fun factor. Besides, gardening often is a very forgiving hobby.

Therefore the heavens won't fall if you didn't do anything special to the soil right now. If the patch will be watered regularly and maintained also - Earthworms in the soil will automatically start doing everything for you.

Really, since you both are exhibiting the signs of information overload - Let's keep things simple and straightforward for now.

Next question, how do you decide which seedling to keep. Or how to separate them from the stack without killing them?

Well, it is always advised to use a seed tray then a pot or a small container. Many experienced gardeners of course will not have any problem separating seedlings from a closely planted bunch - But I have been gardening since as far back as I can remember. And I still haven't been able to do it with 100% success. Therefore a seed tray or very small individual containers is always a better choice for starting seeds.

Everything else looks good. But pulling a plant like lettuce out of the ground is never recommend. Not after it has reached a certain size... Reason being, that in a container the roots will immediately start spreading in all directions as soon as they touch the bottom of the container. So transplanting it elsewhere later doesn't harm it much.

However when growing in the ground, there is no practical bottom for the roots to hit initially, (unless there are rocks below). So even though the root system of any given plant will be of the same mass, (compared to a plant of similar size in the container). It still will be very differently shaper and distributed. Which is why roots of a plant in a container are twisting and turning around all over. But plants of the same size in the ground will have roots going a lot deeper.

This is why you can relocate plants from a container into the ground. But shifting them from the ground into a container, is not always successful, (not unless the plants are very young)... As 90% of the times you are likely to cause serious damage to the roots.

Now a bit of my own advice. I really like to grow my own chilli peppers, (all types). And I also can't live without growing tomatoes either. But with planting so many nice and different types of vegetables in close proximity to each other - Will become like an open invitation to an all you can eat buffet for the harmful insects.

Now you can use pesticides if you like. But in my opinion, that just defeats the whole concept of organically growing your own food.

So what can you do?

Answer is very simple actually. Which is to use plants that act as a natural bug repellent! Take for example the humble marigolds - Doesn't really matter what color or type they are, (tall, short, yellow, orange, or white). As long as there are marigolds growing in and all around your vegetable patch. Majority of all the harmful insects won't attack what you are growing. Same with growing garlic and ginger too.

 

Your pics are not loading for me ! Best thing is just to know what you want to grow annd what you have done so far ! Welcome to the group btw ! Forgot to say that ! Also need to know where geographically you are located !
Everyone needs to know how to feed themselves but please,,stay off the computer ! Gardening is simple if you do not overthink it ! You need a masters degree for some of these sites,,,can`t think of a single gardener I know that has one and believe me,,southern gardeners know how to grow vegetables !

 

what zone are you in?

what do we do to the soil?
is it just native soil right now? add some compost, I fill my beds with native soil + topsoil + cow compost

thinning squash?
squash doesn't like to be picked out, ideally, you want to thin sooner rather than later, but your pot seems pretty good size, so maybe you should just cut one of them.

you should probably be planting the onions and lettuce in the bed right now.
also, Direct sow some lettuce in the raised bed.

my final piece of advice... some plants WILL fail, don't worry about it, just plant/direct sow more stuff! with that said, you can direct sow, carrots peas lettuce radishes right now.

also... its probably going to be very good idea to cover your bed with some weed fabric, its so big, and i get the feeling it will have empty spots, the weeding is going to be a problem.

i didnt cover my bed last year, but I think i should have...

 

@S-H
Glad you made it back from shopping! Crazy times we are living in!
Thank you very much for the advice! We will definitely implement your suggestions that we can. Also, you are totally right, we should keep it simple!
I would like to copy your suggestions into the comments of the video so they can help others as well of they happen upon our video.
If possible we would love to have you subscribe to our video series so that you can offer advice all season as we post new videos with questions. I hope you will be able to do that!
Thanks again very much!

 

@mart
Thank you so very much for the welcome!
Another great comment reminding us to keep it simple, great advice!
We posted a YouTube video with our questions. If the link isn't working you can find the video by searching the title:
How To Start A Garden - Interactive Gardening Beginner Help Request From Experts - 2020 Season

We are located in the Denver area of Colorado.
We do try to spend as much time off the computer and in the dirt as possible
We are planning to continue the video series for the season and post more questions as they come up. We know we aren't the only ones new to gardening and many of our questions are the same for others. Hopefully the videos can be a resource for others.
I would like to copy your advice into the comments of the video so they can help others as well of they happen upon our video.
If possible we would love to have you subscribe to our video series so that you can offer advice all season as we post new videos with questions. I hope you will be able to do that!
Thanks again very much!

 

@adam.ca
Thank you for giving us some of your insights!
We are located in the Denver area of Colorado.
The soil is a mix of native and some compost soil mix that we ordered many years ago. It sounds like we should probably add some compost.
Thank you for the advice to our questions, as well as the tip about weed fabric!
This is a super chill forum, everybody is offering encouragement to not overthink or worry when things go wrong! Right on!
As with other responses we are getting, I would like to copy your advice into the comments of the video so they can help others as well if they happen upon our video.
If possible we would love to have you subscribe to our video series so that you can offer advice all season as we post new videos with questions.
Your hard earned knowledge based on experience is invaluable and worth sharing!
Thanks again very much!

 

Btw to everyone, I think I am responding correctly to all the posts using the "@name" function. I hope I'm doing that right

Thanks for being so helpful to a newbie!!!

 

The first thing I noticed is the soil looks like it needs some feeding. It looks very light compared to the soil in your pots. Advice when transplanting plants is to do this after the bed is in shade in the afternoon and to water well the hole before you plant them out.

 

By the way, welcome.
The second thing I noticed is that your bed is huge and you will have difficulty to access the middle of your bed without climbing into it. Maybe to smaller beds and then you can access all areas.

 

@Odif
Thanks for responding! We will definitely integrate your advice. That's true about the bed size... didn't really consider that...darn it!
We hope you will be willing to "mentor" us all season! Please subscribe to the channel so you can see our videos with more questions as they arise this summer. We also hope all the great comments will benefit other newbies to the gardening world! We really hope you'll consider subscribing! Thanks again very much!

 

I do have a YouTube channel of my own. It was very successful in the start. However I have been neglecting it since the last few years...

Still, you can see this video I made of the 2011 Flower Show in my area.



Another video of mine got over 2 million views. It is about how old ships are broken up at one of our beaches. And the steel recycled.



But frankly speaking, (and excuse my language), YouTube community is nothing but a bunch of unemployed bigots who belong in the cesspool... No matter what you do, how nice you try to be, you will sooner or later get flooded with nasty comments which will provoke you into gutter fighting.

So when most of your time online gets devoted to just fighting - A time soon comes when you decide that enough is enough, as this is now harming my productivity in other areas too.

And with videos like mine that get over a million views, you can imagine the tsunami of nasty comments. But what was most amazing, was that those who only posted the highest number of insulting comments - Didn't really have any quality videos on their own channel. In fact, I am now double sure that most of them didn't even pass junior school.

One will obviously suggest I should ignore them. Or block them. But if all you end up doing the entire day is just keep blocking hundreds upon hundreds people, (yes believe it or not but there really are too many of them). Is when you just switch off the comments. But the moment you do that, your video starts to show up lower and lower in the search, (as no comments mean less activity).

Now to add insult to injury, the bad policy changes of YouTube in recent years - Means that I for one am today totally disgusted with everything and everyone over there...

 

@S-H
Wow, I never considered that...but I guess it makes sense, there is a darker side to everything. I guess all we can do is hope for positivity. I appreciate you giving us some warning; like we agreed earlier, it is good to be prepared.

 

i sub'ed, look forward to next week's vid. cool concept, I wanted to do a similar video series, but never got past the first few vids.

you can maybe just add some "stepping stones" in the bed which will allow you to get in there without stepping all over the place compacting your soil.

and when you get your garden soil+ compost, be sure to put little effort mixing it into the native soil a bit. it's back-breaking work getting started!
annnnd don't buy the expensive stuff, IMO its the cheaper run of the mill garden soil and compost from Wallmart is just fine.