If you are a new beginner at gardening or just love gardening as a whole, here are some gardening hacks you can apply to grow healthy crops.
Gardening, as we know it, is that one stress-relieving activity that not only beautifies your garden but also positively contributes to the environment.
However, other activities at hand, such as our jobs, can affect our productivity. We are mostly available or in a position to give our plants in the backyard all the attention they need.
Nevertheless, worry not! Tons of gardening hacks will certainly improve your maintenance efforts without hindering the results you want to see in your garden.
When it comes down to gardening, it is an art, a passion, and a way of life for many. It helps with the uplifting of one’s mood, like therapy, and heals oneself during a challenging phase or incident. Nevertheless, there are many ways to make gardening fun and easy with a few gardening hacks.
List Of Gardening Hacks For New Beginners
1. If you are plating and growing mostly vegetables such as lettuce and bok choi, installing a net shade above the crops will increase productivity and growth significantly, specifically during hot summertime or adverse climate change, which are not suitable for these types of plants.
The benefits of using net shades are that they will protect the plants from harmful UV sun rays and keep them from getting too dry.
This is ideal for those who are located in warmer climate zones.
2. Watering plants at particular times that are suitable to boost plant growth. The best time to water plants or crops is in the early morning or evening. The temperature of the water should not be too hot or too cold, but at a moderate temperature.
3. Beautify your garden by adding some color to it with flowering plants. Your garden should look appealing and soothing to one’s eyes and radiate positive energy throughout. Planting flowers in the garden will bring variety and color to your garden and can evade certain pests as well.
4. Another garden hack is to regularly monitor soil moisture in your garden. You may be watering your plants or crops too much, which is harmful to the plants. Always check the soil moisture to see if it is dry before watering your plants again.
5. Care for your plants like a friend or family member, consider them as living beings, and talk with them accordingly. Plants and crops live a lot longer under good care and attention.
6. For starters, use a well-drained soil mix. Overwatering is one of the main causes of container plant diseases.
Normally, I use commercial potting soil mixed with extra perlite. If you are using a container to sow or transplant your crops, make sure your containers have adequate drainage holes. This way, water does not collect at the bottom of your pots, drowning the plant roots.
7. Fertilize your plants regularly. Occasionally, I use Osmocote 14-14-14 time-release fertilizer. One sprinkling of this fertilizer onto the topsoil base of the plant root, mixed in a couple of inches, will feed the plant for 4 months before you have to reapply fertilizer.
8. Plant where you get as much sunlight as possible, up to at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day.
9. In warmer climates, do not use black containers. Why? Well, the reason is that they absorb heat to the point where it is possible to burn the roots of the plants and even their leaves. Always choose containers made of wood or plastic in pastel colors.
10. Mulching your plants and crops in your containers with fine compost will loosen the soil a bit so that water can flow through easily. Nevertheless, mulching helps retain moisture lost to evaporation.
11. Choose plant or crop varieties suited to the size of the container you possess. Generally speaking, the taller a plant grows above ground, the deeper the plant roots need to go underground. Most tomato varieties, for example, work far better in containers than tomato plants that get 6′ tall, unless the container is huge.
12. Most gardeners generally cover the drainage holes with gravel to improve drainage; however, if we instead use sponges, it will be way better. The sponge will absorb water, unlike gravel, and when the soil drys, the water will travel towards the roots or soil due to diffusion. This is a very good hardening hack for the self-watering technique.
13. When it comes to vegetable peels, such as banana peels, instead of throwing them away, I suggest burying them near plant roots because when they decompose, they will provide potassium to the plant.
14. Most people usually throw away plastic bottles instead of cutting the bottle in half, and the part with the hole in it can be used to cover baby seedlings. This gardening hack, in most cases, will protect them. This will ensure a better growth rate, and I hope this will help you as well.
