You Can't Learn How to Become a Gardener in a Day

I don't think anyone's ever picked up a basketball for the first time and shot a perfect three-pointer. You don't get a pair of point shoes on your very first day of ballet. Gardening, like so many other hobbies, sports, artistic endeavors, etc., is a skill that takes time to master.

Whether you've never grown so much as a leaf on your own before or you've had a bit of garden success, it's easy to become overwhelmed with all of the advice on the internet. Having someone cut through all the noise for you and say, "These are the simple things that work. They've worked for me, and they've worked for hundreds of my students and clients," can be really helpful.

With that in mind, we've rounded up 11 tips we wish we'd known when we were getting started.

Start Small

Gardening is not a go-big-or-go-home kind of operation. You don't have to be planting an entire farm's worth of carrots and eggplants your first season. Our goal is not to replace trips to the grocery store entirely (I mean, unless you're wanting to go completely off the grid). Our goal is, instead, to create a year-round supply of fresh and dried herbs, replace a couple month's of grocery-store salad with the homegrown variety, and supplement our usual produce purchases with tastier garden-fresh fruits and veggies.

If you're just getting started in the garden, we recommend trying your hand at microgreens or herbs. Once you've mastered those, move up to salad greens and then, finally, the needier plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash.

Extend Your Growing Seasons

Most of us don't have the weather to grow outdoors 12 months of the year, but there are some tricks up gardeners' sleeves that can help you make the most of every month in the garden.

The first trick to maximize your time is starting before most gardeners have even begun to think about spring. Still snowing where you live? You can be starting high-impact seeds indoors so that you're ready to transplant them outdoors as soon as the weather warms. Learn when to start your seeds indoors.

By starting plants inside and giving them as much of a head start as possible before moving them outdoors once the climate is right, you increase how much production and enjoyment you'll be able to get from those plants.

The second trick is to use cold frames, frost cloth, or row covers to protect your plants from frost and snow. With the right covers over your plants, you can buy yourself a little more time, a couple more harvests of your favorite leaves or veggies.

Document Your Garden Progress

I like to keep a journal of what I planted each year, what grew well that season, and what didn't work very well. I can look back on this journal each season to learn from my mistakes and find new opportunities to improve my growing space. You might think you'll remember what worked and what didn't from year to year, but it's amazing what you can forget when you're holding a packet of seeds and feeling a time crunch.

Part of documenting your progress is taking lots of pictures along the way.

Feed Your Soil With Organic Matter

There's no need to pump your garden full of synthetic fertilizers. Compost is the best all-around, nutrient-dense food you can feed your plants. Not only does compost provide all the good stuff your plants need to stay happy and healthy, it also absorbs a lot of water but drains quickly, which your plants love.

Remember this when you're growing plants you intend to eat: You can't expect your plants to give you lots of nutrients if they haven't been grown in a nutrient-rich environment. Your food garden needs to be full of vitamins and minerals because, quite simply, nutrient-rich food comes from nutrient-rich soil.

Before you do any new planting each season, add a fresh layer of compost to your garden soil.

Learn how to create your own compost at home.

Plant Successively for Continuous Harvests

Just as you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, don't sow all your seeds at once. If you plant forty radish seeds at the same time, you're probably going to end up with more radishes than you'd ever know what to do with.

The idea of successive sowing is to plant a seed, allow a couple of weeks to pass, and then plant the same kind of seed nearby the original. That way, you can harvest from one plant that's more mature and then come back later to harvest from another. Instead of ending up with a bunch of the same crop at once, you can harvest continuously from a series of plants added to your garden at different times throughout the season.

Learn more about how to extend your growing season with successive sowing.

Invest in Good Soil

This is a bit of a repeat, but I'm including growing medium in here twice because it's that important and yet often neglected.

When you look at a thriving kitchen garden, the first things you'll notice are the plants and then maybe the trellises, the boxes, and the pathways. But if you cheat on the soil, the stuff that hides inside those raised beds, you might as well forget about the rest of it. Good soil is the most important part of your garden.

Most of the places I've gardened in had mostly clay in the ground. This is fine for larger plants with strong roots you'll find in many landscapes, but the majority of the plants you'll want to grow in your kitchen garden have more tender roots that need a particular type of soil. They thrive in soil that holds air and water and that lightly supports their roots. This soil is typically a blend of sand, silt, clay, and compost.

Instead of looking for quick fixes like MiracleGro or another soil filled with synthetic fertilizer, instead of spending years amending your in-ground soil to finally achieve the right composition for growing tomatoes, start with the good stuff from the very beginning. Consider it an investment that will give you many happy returns.

Use our soil calculator to figure out how much soil you'll need to fill your raised beds.

Grow in Raised Beds

After starting my first kitchen garden in the ground, I eventually found exponentially more success growing in raised beds instead. The first reason I recommend raised beds is to maximize your productivity. Raised beds provide the good drainage plants love and allow their roots to burrow much deeper underground without taking up a lot of horizontal space, meaning you can fit more plants in a small bed. By filling your raised bed with good soil, you'll also see more production from your plants.

The second reason I recommend raised beds is their increased convenience for people with bad backs or mobility issues. With a two-foot tall raised garden bed, you bend over from the waist and are at the plant’s level, which makes tending and harvesting so much easier and more convenient. 

Finally, I recommend raised beds because they elevate your outdoor space and provide lasting beauty all year long. Even if your plants aren’t growing yet, your raised bed is a hardscaping piece that becomes an integral feature of your landscape. 

Read more about why raised beds are better for gardening.

Don't Give Up When a Plant Dies

I've designed gardens for several self-described "plant killers." I myself once watched many a tomato plant fail to produce fruit and then die until I figured out that my setup was all wrong. So, I understand how easy it is to throw in the trowel when a plant dies because you assume it's your fault and you've failed.

Around here, we don't believe that a green thumb is something you're born with or not. We believe that having the right setup and working to grow your garden knowledge are all you need to have a flourishing kitchen garden. Remember that it's okay to start small and that if growing something hasn't been working for you, you can switch to something else.

As you're growing your gardening knowledge, view your garden as an experiment. Each and every season is an opportunity to learn and try something new and see first-hand that a failure in the garden is not the end of the world. Even people who've been gardening for decades learn something new every season.

Plant Flowers Alongside Your Fruits, Veggies, and Herbs

My goal is to have a kitchen garden that is both beautiful and productive. Planting flowers helps meet both of these requirements.

It's hard to argue against the beauty of flowers. I love planting flowers to climb up trellises, to grow tall in my pollinator garden, and to drape over the corners of my beds. Beautiful? Check!

Flowers also bring beneficial insects like bees and butterflies into your garden space. Not only can native and organic flowers create a safe haven for pollinators in our backyard, they also ensure your fruiting plants will be pollinated to maximize your yield. Productive? Check!

Explore my list of easy plants that attract bees and butterflies to the garden.

Remember That Plants Want to Grow

Plants, just like humans, are motived by survival and the continuation of their species. As gardeners, we shouldn't have to force plants to do anything that goes against their goals.

We should be working with nature, not against it. Plants want to thrive, and they will if you grow them in their optimal conditions.

That means your job is to recreate inside your garden how these plants would grow on their own. You don't need tons of man-made products. You don't need to create any miracles. You just need to set your plants up with great soil, grow them in their preferred season, and aim to give them their ideal levels of sunlight and water.

Learn From the Experts

Just as new parents are inundated with conflicting, sometimes antiquated pieces of advice, so too are new gardeners. Why spend years learning on your own and sifting through confusing or contradictory recommendations when you can learn from someone with years of experience, someone passionate about sharing their knowledge with others?

The best way to learn from a pro is to find a garden coach in your area. Not only are garden coaches skilled in breaking down garden concepts into easy-to-learn lessons, they're also experts at gardening in your specific area. While there are general gardening principles for people who live in all different kinds of climates, there's no substitute for getting a person who gardens in your town to help you. A garden coach who gardens in your exact same climate has the same amount of sunshine, rain, and frost as you, and that person will be able to best help you and guide you on what to plant when for success.

You can find Gardenary-certified garden coaches on our Consultants page. Search by map or pick a state to find the consultant closest to you. Follow the nearest coach to you on social media to see what they're planting and when, or reach out to them for one-on-one coaching.

I'm on a mission to bring about a revival in kitchen gardening. I want every single person to be able to confidently grow a little bit of their own food, whether that's in a couple pots on a sunny windowsill or in a raised-bed kitchen garden. With all of the resources right at our fingertips online and with the increasing availability of garden coaches across the country, there's never been a better time to make this revival happen.

Thanks for being here and helping me bring back the kitchen garden!