Design Tips To Create Your Dream Garden

Mrs. MIgardener here!  We are excited to share with you a series of blogs to help you design the garden of your dreams. I look forward to sharing our growing tips, stories, and lessons from the garden. Gardening is something that has always brought us together.

Before we drop a seed and the fun starts, lets PLAN!

Luke has always had the vision to create greatness in anything he wants to achieve. When it is winter here, he is already talking about what we will be doing next year and how he will design and re-design. I always challenge him a bit, since he tends to go BIG! However, it has taught me something valuable about life, that without a plan or vision, it is hard to see things come to fruition. Applying that logic, I hope with these seeds of knowledge it will help guide you and your loved ones to see your ideal garden come true. Creating a garden can be more than for food, it can be a way of bonding, creating memories, trying out new things, and just giving us a sense of discovery. . . let the planning commence!

Write it all out

Have fun in this step, after all, it is your garden!

Some questions to ask yourself!

• What varieties do you want to grow?
• Is there a particular method of growing you want to try out?
• What will you enjoy growing?
• What size do I want my garden, and where do I want it?
• Will I eat this? (yes, it is pretty important)

Picking a spot to plot

Analyze how much sun the growing area receives. It is important to make sure that at a minimum your garden receives 4-5 hours of sun to grow things like leaf vegetables, and around 7-8 hours to grow things like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc.  Here is a video we did on the importance of picking the right spot. Just like in real estate, location, location, location is important!

Meet your soil

Asses your soil type to see if growing in ground will work. If the soil is too heavy with clay you will not have a very fun time gardening. If you find this is the case try raised beds as they allow much more forgivable growing conditions. Another option if you are not ready for raised beds, try container gardening.

Draw it out

Once you have some of your answers, you can start drawing a plan out! Grid paper, is very useful in drawing out your ideas. You may be under or overestimating the space you have available to grow in, so once it is in the paper it feels a lot more concrete. Make sure to get creative! If you feel that you have too little space, think of what things you can afford to grow indoors, in containers, windowsills, front lawn, etc! Use this link to print your own Graph Paper to start drawing.

Plan for many different scenarios

I can not tell you how many times we go back and forth with ideas, once we lay them out in the paper, we can much visually assess what is feasible, and what needs to be thought of again.  This has helped me grasp an idea of the many many plans Luke proposes, and this helps me jump on board since I can visually see what we can do! Last year, Luke did a video walkthrough in planning this year's garden, check it here!

Start small, and grow some more each year

If this is your first time gardening, we often advise you to start small. Starting small will help get your feet wet, and will allow you time to learn about the upkeep of your garden. However, you can also get creative by inviting a family or friend to upkeep a garden together and split the harvest in exchange. The most important thing when starting out is to build confidence - in order to encourage yourself to keep going. If you are not ready to start a science project in your yard or patio, there is always an option to join or even start a community garden. These communities are a good place to learn and bring people together!

Keep it simple and have fun

Remember to keep things simple and to not overwhelm yourself with the process of planning. Planning may not be the thing for you, but trust us it is well worth it. We will delve into more posts about budgeting for one, choosing seeds, and much more to help you along. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and  YouTube as we will be going LIVE each Thursday at 8 PM to talk on a topic, and to answer any questions! If you can not make it at that time, no worries, submit your questions to us at contact@old.migardener.com. We hope once you complete this step in designing your plot you feel motivated and inspired to move forward.

I will catch you all on the next blog post!

Love,

Sindy