Are you starting on your gardening journey this year? Maybe branching out to some new-to-you plants? Trying out a new style of gardening?
Share your questions! Share your plans! How can we help you grow something wonderful? What do you wish you knew more about?
And remember, if you don’t need this thread then this thread needs you!
Good options for vegetables or herbs to start from seed in zone 7a? I’ve only had success with marigolds and thai basil from seed, and I’m working on a more limited budget this year, so I’m trying to do more seeds rather than starter plants. Also considering trying peas this year.
Peas and beans should be great for you, and they’re also some of the easiest plants to get started saving seeds for future seasons. They can make your garden beautiful to look at too - dragon langerie is a variety we grew last year and it’s stunning.
Warm season crops like peppers or tomatoes, squash family plants like cucumbers and melons might be good for you too. 7a has (to me, a zone 5 gardener) sort of a Goldilocks season where you get generally good temps and a long growing season, without having the sort of heat that just kills things like in zones 9 and 10.
Beans for sure. When it is a wet year I pickled beans because I had so many that I couldn’t use lol.
I have never once had peas work in 3 years of trying. Here in Belgium we had a year with sun, year with not much and a lot of rain, then a year of half full sun and half full rain.
The peas have never made it more than 8cm tall and refused to grab onto nets, string, bamboo, anything u put near them.
Moved to a new house and might try again though.
Peas and beans! Great recommendation. Did a little looking and they can grow in five gallon buckets, which should be perfect. Wish I could do more viney plants like melons but my space is extremely tight. I’m going to start my lettuce and carrots earlier this year so they have a chance to do something before it gets real hot out. Temps here are generally pretty nice, though I did lose an entire batch of black swallowtail caterpillars to the heat two years ago. Those little buggers can’t take much above 85F.
I received a small (6-ish spaces) hydroponics kit two Christmases ago, and grew a few strawberry plants in it last year following the instructions that came with it. We never really got any strawberries off of them, but the plants themselves did wonderfully until the cats got to them.
This year I’d like to try something more “useful”, like fresh herbs or micro greens (both of which are rather expensive to buy where I live). Does anybody have tips for how to start these, and places (in the US or that ship to it) that might carry seeds for the micro greens? I’m also concerned about running out of the “fertilizer” that came with the kit.
AFAIK, micro greens are just regular greens that you plant really close together and then harvest before they get mature.
Please someone correct me if this isn’t technically microgreens but what I’ve done in the past to get mini salad greens is you just get one of those larger seedlings trays (or you can use old milk cartons cut in half), put some soil in it, and plant seeds in really dense rows (like >10 seeds an inch). Then you just harvest them when they get to be an inch tall or something similar. I just use regular collard, kale, mustard, and lettuce seeds from the garden shop.
You can also grow stuff from the grocery store. One of my favorites to grow is pea shoots. You literally buy a bag of dried peas from the grocery store and plant them like I described above. Then harvest them when they get about 3-4 inches tall. They go great in spring salads. Mung beans are another grocery store staple that I love sprouting on my own instead of buying the sprouts.
Not sure what your kit looks like but you can definitely grow micro greens in potting soil as well if you run out of whatever the kit has! Just make sure you’re keeping an eye on moisture so they don’t stay too wet or get too dry. Because micro greens are basically seedlings, you don’t actually need to fertilize them at all and they can actually grow in pretty spare soil.
I haven’t really played around with hydroponics but another veggie grower near me is almost exclusively on them. He gets the bulk of his supplies from growerssupply.com and from what I can tell he’s been pretty happy with them. Fingers crossed we get some folks who can speak more to this part of your question for you!
For herb seeds, I’ve been really happy with what we’ve received from FedCo and Strictly Medicinal Seeds. FedCo has a nice selection particularly for the New England region of the US but Strictly Medicinal has absolute tons of awesome stuff that won’t like it near me (but also bunches that will)
There are styles of gardening? Are any of them suitable for a lazy beginner?
Oh sure! Just to add to what @Butterbee said, there’s also “square foot gardening” (not for lazy gardeners), Ruth Stout/straw bale gardening (lazy adjacent), and lots of approaches to tweak any style you choose.
I think container gardening is readily approachable, especially if you use larger pots to grow several plants with similar needs together. If your preference is more towards “set and forget” then roughing up a patch of soil, sowing wildflower seeds, and covering with a light mulch like straw or hay is a good way to start dabbling. Just avoid the “wildflower mix” bags at the big box stores, because they’re probably not designed for your region. A mom & pop nursery is more likely to have species for your area.
idk about styles but there are certainly different ways of gardening. There’s hydroponic gardening, gardening in containers, having plots out in the yard…
Lazy beginner options could be to go for succulents in containers next to a window, or maybe picking up some herbs that you can grow in pots from the garden store.
Honestly, one thing to look at would be using ollas, or terracotta pots that irrigate the plants for you. It is an easy way to once to twice a week water your plants. I use it almost exclusively in my gardens because my work schedule is too hectic sometimes for daily watering, plus it is much more effective in deep-root watering.
I’m still not 100% sure we won’t get another frost so I’ve planted some spring onions knowing that there’s a chance they will not make it. I plan to put some marigolds with them this year, and then to put some decorative plants behind them in the harder to reach area of the plot.
I pretty much expect a late frost every year - planting guides around us say not to plant outside before mothers day. I’ll still sow early season brassicas so we start getting delicious greens as early as possible though. And I love putting marigolds in with our veg, great choice!
Made the silly mistake of trying to disabuse myself of the fantasy of rewilding a bit of land with some interlaced permaculture, as am barely functional & very clueless, but wanted to avoid group projects as very introverted & would want to camp overnight at times then perhaps graduate to an extra-basic one-person cob structure.
Found something ideal-seeming isn’t nearly as costly as I’d imagined, so the fantasies I’d been trying to shed have gone… stratospheric.
Don’t really know anyone, so can’t even get together a group to buy it as a trust, but may give a collective I’m aware of a head’s up as they’re likely to know of other collectives who have yet to find suitable land.
