Hello everyone. I am the summer marketing student at Over 55. As we approach the end of spring, I thought it would be a good idea to share my journey of starting a garden for the first time. During my first month of gardening, I learned some interesting lessons:
Lesson 1: Animals are not so cute when they eat your food.
You will quickly learn that the furry friends in your backyard also find the lettuce and tomatoes in your garden delicious. Here is an image of the skunk that keeps coming into our garden:
Rabbits and squirrels were also a problem. Rabbits will munch on your lettuce all day and squirrels will eat anything. The only solution we found was installing a barrier like garden netting or plant protection tents to keep them out.
Lesson 2: Start small, research your plants, and maintain regularly.
I learned the hard way growing garden plants is not as easy as leaving a potato in the ground to grow. Animals will eat your plants, grubs will destroy your roots, inadequate watering will kill your plants, and weeds will grow back unless you pull out the entire root.
Some notes I made:
- Pull weeds by their roots.
- Loosen the dirt to allow roots to expand.
- Install barriers to prevent animals from entering your garden.
- Different plants need different fertilizer content (nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassum (K)), water amounts, and sunlight duration to grow properly.
I hope to grow some successful plants using the lessons I learned in June. Thank you for reading this blog and I hope to have more success growing plants next month.