Gardening Tips for Beginners (US)

 We live in Ohio; US and we have very short summers here. We have chilly weather from Oct - April and so we are only left with few months to do Gardening. 

I usually start in May and buy baby plants from Home Depot or Lowes or some nurseries. We could always germinate seeds indoors from March and move them out in May but for beginners, I would recommend buying plants directly.

For Vegetables, start with Tomato, Chilly, Green Pepper, Mint plants. You could buy 4-5 tomato plants, 1 or 2 Chilly and 1 or 2 green pepper plants and plant them in individual 12-inch pots if you don't have options to plant them in ground. I tried others like Okra, Egg Plant, Colored Peppers but they did not result in good yield, and we need to have lots of these plants for a good yield. So, stay out of those at least until you become experienced in this stuff and have lot of patience and space.

Buy good organic potting mix (I usually buy several bags from Sam's club or Costco when on sale) and fill the pots with this mix. Add Miracle Grow Plant food and mix it into the soil. Soak the soil with water. Plant the baby plants you got from store into these bigger pots, water them and keep it in an area with good sunlight. In summer, water plants every single day and do deep watering until the water flows out of the pot.

For Tomatoes, plant the roots as deep as possible and cover the stem with soil as much as possible as the stems grows roots and will help with better plant support. Tomatoes need 8 hours of sunlight and lots of water. Trim the leaves at the bottom of the pot so they don't get infested with bugs. And remove any side branches that pop up and just leave 1 or 2 main branches. Don't water the leaves. Also, when the plants start having lots of leaves, keep removing some of them so plant can focus energies on producing fruits. And don't encourage early flowers if the plant is not yet strong to support it. Remove those flowers until main stem is strong enough. Provide plant food once every 2 weeks. You could alternate between Epsom salt water and miracle grow plat food. If you start in May, you will start having good harvest from July till September. 

In October, remove all the plants and clean your garden space for next year. You could use the space for winter veggies if you'd like.

I tried some leafy veggies such as Spinach, Methi, Lettuce, Gongura, Chukka Kura, Thotakura, Coriander from seeds and was successful at times but not always. Don't lose hope if they don't last. Keep trying and have patience. Some of these veggies need cooler temperatures and cannot handle extreme heat.

I also tried several flowering plants this year such as Roses, Tulips, Buttercups, Hibiscus, Lillies, Gladiolus, Mums etc. I don't recommend Buttercups as they don't last longer. All these flowering plants need flower boosting plant food once every few weeks. Keep removing dead and old flowers from plants so it can produce newer ones. We need to prep Roses for Winter during October month by trimming the branches to just 1 or 2 inches above ground level and cover it fully with mulch. And add cow manure in spring after snow cycle in done.

I will create another blog about winter care and indoor plants soon.