Gardening - Core skills of the Self Reliant

Gardening - Core skills of the Self Reliant

Gardening is a core skill for any person wishing to become more self-reliant. The others are Cooking and Re-Purposing. The ability to grow one's own crops is a rewarding experience. However there are a few common mis-steps that beginning gardeners tend to make.

First is you don't need alot of land or fancy planting pots/garden plots. Starting out go dirt cheap, get some cheap plastic pots or a flower bed. However also the key thing to remember is growing your crops is not an instant process and even if you do everything right you can still not have a good crop or something might happen like your pet may see your flower bed as a nice cool place to lay down.

Second growing plants is not hard for the most part, but the trick is routine and details. Watering is critical  know what are the water requirements of what you are growing and the drainage of the soil and container you have that plant in. The best way to check drainage is pour some water and see how fast the top of the soil dries out.

Third is understand the grow requirements of what you plant. You wouldn't plant a bell pepper in a solo cup. However a couple of basil plants will do wonderfully in one. With this is understanding how deep and how far apart to plant the crop in question.

Fourth is sunlight and your hardiness zone, especially if you are growing crops outdoors, you want to be sure and plant when they is little chance for a hard freeze if you do not have anything to cover your crops (greenhouse, pine straw, smoke pots). Best course of action for beginners is to buy plants. If you do seeds, then spout them inside and then slowly introduce them to the outside before planting them in your outside garden.

Fifth is fertilizer, a little bit goes a long way. Also if you are going to use organic fertilizer such as cow, chicken, rabbit or turkey poo. Be sure it's aged a bit, to age manure spread it out, let the sun and rain do the work and mix it every so often this process takes a couple of weeks.

Gardening can be rewarding and easy as long as you follow some simple rules and don't expect results in a couple of days. Most crops take 3-5 months to go from seed to mature crop producing plant.

Links of Interest for this Topic

National Gardening Association - http://www.garden.org/

Grow Spot 24 Tips for the Beginner - http://www.thegrowspot.com/index.php?pageid=tips

Old Farmer's Almanac - http://www.almanac.com/gardening