Can't start growing vegetables, do you have any tips?

LittleMouse@lemmy.world · 13 hours

I thought about growing vegetables in order to better weather the coming crises which may be quite difficult, I thought about it a few months ago, but after learning how much I would have to learn, I thought, oh, all this information is spinning my head. Where should I start? What fertilizers to use, how not to overpay money and other resources? How to stretch soil fertility as long as possible and is it possible not to be physically exhausted in the process? Time is also running out.

Well, as a result, my brain subconsciously abandoned this idea, well, I was too used to a comfortable life and food from the supermarket. And so it has been for four months.

I know I’m pathetic. I haven’t even bought seeds yet.

pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works · 3 hours

A lot of people have given good information here, but I think right now you seem to be experiencing overwhelm, and you may need a bit more experience to make sense of it all. So I’m gonna start you off very simple.

Buy a packet of snap peas. Little Marvels are good, but any snap peas will work.

Get a growing container. If you can find a milk crate, that’ll work. You can line it with the burlap from a bag of rice, or with garden cloth.

Fill it with dirt. There are a lot of cool things you can do to make dirt, but we’re doing dead simple. Buy some soil at the store. Garden soil or potting soil will be fine.

Sprinkle your peas over the dirt. Push them in so they’re covered by dirt.

Water daily on days it doesn’t rain. The goal is to make sure the soil doesn’t dry out.

When the peas sprout, put something into the container for them to climb up. Wooden stakes are usually good for this.

Harvest peas as you see them. They can be eaten raw or cooked in various ways.

Eventually, they will finish producing and die off. You will notice them going brown and shriveling up. Once you reach this stage, look up how to compost. That will be your next step.

Once you have built confidence with the above exercises, start looking through seed catalogs for next spring to figure out what you want to grow. Then come back to Lemmy for advice with a list of the plants, your location or growing zone (you can look your growing zone up online) and some information about the space available to you to garden and whether you’ll be doing it as containers on a patio vs. in dirt, etc.

Also, check out c/gardening, as well as potential related communities like balcony gardening and hydroponics.

Drusas@fedia.io · 3 hours

Pretty sure it’s too late in the year to plant peas in most places, but otherwise they are a great starter vegetable.

pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works · 3 hours

Really? Most peas I know take within the realm of 60 days, making them a pretty short cycle crop, hence why I chose them. Peas planted now would be finishing up near September, which is before the first frost date in most Northern Hemisphere zones AFAIK. I doubt OP is in the Southern Hemisphere from the comments on when they first began considering a garden.

kindnesskills@literature.cafe · 5 hours

If you’re late in the planting season you can go for winter veggies. Potatoes and carrots can be planted when it’s cold, and ready to harvest when its warm again. Kale stays green well into the snowy seasons.

Potatoes just needs a bucket or bag per potato, and soil and/or sand. Fill the bucket maybe halfway and hide the potato, then once it starts growing in the spring keep covering the all but the top part of the stem with new sand-soil until the bucket is full, then let finish growing. Water regularly once it thaws outside, but not while it’s freezing.

I think I kept it cold but protected during winter, like a shed, but maybe I just left it outside? You can keep one bucket indoors and one outdoors and see if there are different results in the end. Bring both outside once there’s sun and warmth to kickstart the growing.

Signtist@bookwyr.me · 10 hours

Imagine you’ve got a friend who has never ran a day in their life, and they say they want to run a marathon. Great! An awesome goal! But then they start taking about what specific shirt they should wear on the day of the marathon to reduce drag by some small percentage, when they haven’t even started training yet. It’d be a bit silly, right? You’d probably tell them “Just start practicing today, and as you practice more, you’ll know more.” And you’d be right.

stringere@sh.itjust.works · 6 hours

Perfect example.

Better to try, fail, and learn than to fail because it was never started.

Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 10 hours

Exactly this. Vegetables take a while, so grab your plants now, and start learning!

UNY0N@feddit.org · 13 hours

First off, you are not pathetic, the world is depressing. And just having the intent to do this is a great start. Be kind to yourself, no one else can do that for you.

The first thing to do is forget all of those grand ideas about having a giant garden with all sorts of produce. Even if that is your end goal, don’t think about that! It will only demotivate you, because it seems so far away from where you are now.

The second thing to do is go to your local library and get some books about gardening. The simpler the better, is they have gardening books for kids then start with those.

Read those books. Take some easy examples, like herbs, lettuce, or garlic. Start small, and don’t overdo yourself. Try to enjoy what you are doing, and stay with the present task. Don’t push yourself immediately to do more.

Let that enjoyment be your guide. If you can focus on feeling good about what you are doing, then the rest will come without effort.

Cherry@piefed.social · 12 hours

In a world that feels depressing, the accomplishment of seeing you grew a onion or a straggly but pretty flower is quite fulfilling. you are right, presence and enjoyment are a therapy.

HiobsTriops@lemmy.world · 12 hours

Hey friend. First of all: breathe, you’ll be just fine. There’s nothing pathetic about feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world right now. I’ve recently bought a little allotment garden myself and have some experience with balcony gardening before that. Let’s break everything down to a few basic steps:

Look up your hardiness zones. This will give you an upper and lower threshold of the climate you’re working with and determine when to do what during the season. One starting point is plant maps but once you get started, you’ll find an abundance of resources. Select your crop accordingly.
Familiarize yourself with your soil. Depending on your plot size neither fertilizer nor compost will be an instant solution so it’s best to learn to deal with what you have. Heavy soil with lots of loam may be prone to water logged conditions, sandy soils hardly keep any water at all. There are plants that can deal with either situation. Select accordingly.
Light and shade. Whether you have a lot of shade or full sun, there is a crop for you. Just again, select for what you have not what you wish you have.
Try things, buy, plant, observe, just get your feet wet. Here is a simple example from my plot: I’m in Zone 8a, have mostly heavy soil and full sun. So stuff like rhubarb, some peas, beans, marigold, horseradish and cale mostly work right away. Carrots, Tomatoes or potatoes may need some more support but this can be as simple as adding some sand to make the soil a little lighter. If something works: great, let it bloom, collect seeds, profit forever. If not ask yourself if you can easily fix it or if the crop just may not be suitable for your garden. Just relax and see where it takes you.
Context. Don’t stress too much over fertilizer or soil improvement or all of those very expensive things. A well selected range of crops, a proper composting routine, a good source of manure, mulch and biodiversity supporting structures will ultimately bring you much further than any store-bought “quick and easy” solution. But it will take time. Look into concept like permaculture to see how you can link different parts and components of your garden. Not everything is applicable everywhere and at once but you’ll get there. Just stick to it and while you let your little experiments grow, read, read and then read some more about plant selection, long term (organic) soil improvement and also preservation (you’ll want to know about that as well at some point, believe me). Last note: Maybe as a starting point, to keep things neat and easy to handle, draw some inspiration from square foot gardening as it provides a very manageable, little plot with great yield. Best of luck on your journey and keep your head up.

dumples@piefed.social · 8 hours

Well it’s way to late in the season to start much by seed. I wouldn’t even bother with trying with that. Like others have mentioned get started reading and trying something simple. If you want something grand you will have to wait until the spring next year. Gardening forces you to living seasonally like that. You can’t hold back the heat or frost if you fall behind.

As far as specific starting plants I would do an herb such as basil and salad greens. Both are simple to buy starters for still at garden store and have a short growing season.

FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world · 9 hours

Just take it easy. Put a seed in some dirt and water that spot once a day.

Green beans are really easy where I live near lake Erie. Theyre the only crop I direct sow.

I buy the bush variety of everything so I dont have to fuck with poles and trellises.

Also, you could decide this year to just buy the starts from a local greenhouse – those are plants that are already half grown. Growing from seed is harder than just planting something thats already established.

But yeah, end of the day, its just putting a seed in dirt and adding water.

Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world · 9 hours

Lots of great comments and advice here already so I won’t give you technical info. I’ll just say this, you’re going to learn the most by doing. Information here is helpful, sure, but actually making the mistakes you WILL make is a necessary and important part of the process. Fucking up is not failing, its learning. What type of space are you working with? Do you have the ability to prep via canning/dehydrating/freeze drying? I own and operate a small farm as a side business. So I can give some specific advice depending on your answers.

9point6@lemmy.world · 11 hours

Pick something relatively easy to grow (tomatoes are pretty straightforward in many places), and just try to get produce from it.

Once you have a result, then you can look at improving your approach.

No point running before you can walk, you’re only going to be able to learn so much without actually trying stuff. Plus, if you already have soil to put stuff in, you’re starting out better than I did. My stuff is growing in pots.

You’re getting a bit late in the year to maximise most crops (if northern hemisphere) but that doesn’t mean there’s no point, so just throw shit at the wall to see what sticks. Seeds are cheap, and failed plants can still make compost as well as provide a learning opportunity

OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world · 12 hours

Gardening is a lot about trial and error - and there’s always gonna be something catching you off (rain, pests, root rot etc).

When I knew nothing, I started off growing 1 easy thing like tomatoes and going from there. You dont even need seeds, just grab a bag of premixed soil (there’ll be bags at ya local supply store that say tomato mix) then cut a thick slice of a tomato from ya fridge and chuck it in a small pot of soil (saw it in a tiktok video). Once sprouts start coming up (like a 2 or 3 weeks) pull the biggest ones out and chuck em in their own pot and let em grow. Water em like once a week or every few days depending on the weather and bob’s ya uncle.

The cunts ended up growing through the bottom of the pot, through the turf and into the ground underneath, so they’re strong bastards.

The confidence of growing ya first veg motitivates you to tackle more stuff and before you know it ya got a green thumb.

alternategait@lemmy.world · 9 hours

Also don’t feel bad if this trick doesn’t work. Many varieties grown to be sold at supermarkets are sterile.

discocactus@lemmy.world · 13 hours

Start with something easy like arugula or sunflower sprouts. Not everything has to be perfect right away. And it takes a new kind of attention and patience. Just start playing with it.

Cherry@piefed.social · 13 hours

Agree. I once grew onions in bags…kinda by accident. I did nothing and they grew. That boosted my confidence. Radishes are pretty easy too. They both grew fast, with minimal care from me. Your location, your soil/climate etc also matters…its probs a good idea to look up what zone you are and pick the easiest growing thing. https://www.plantmaps.com/ if you dont know soil just grab a bag of cheap compost and a strong bag/recycled tub.

It does not have to be hard or a responsibility. Perfect is the enemy of the Good enough.

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 11 hours

Got an allotment this year. Start growing a variety of things, see what works and what doesn’t. Here are some things I have been growing.

Jerusalem artichokes seem to be growing nicely, not dug them up yet though to see how big they are underground.

Tried garlic and it struggled, bulbs are all tiny. Ground likely too damp for them or planted too deep. Might try walking onions next year

Radishes, the greens were nice, roots have mostly been nibbled by maggots though.

Good king Henry/some variety of goosefoot, planted seeds and feels like I shouldn’t have bothered as it’s growing everywhere wether I want it to or not. Perennial plant and you can eat the leaves like spinach, seeds like quinoa, shoots like asparagus.

Perennial kale - just getting eaten by insects so probably going to give up on that soon.

Rhubarb and blackcurrants, recently planted so not had much time to comment on them yet. Seen other people nearby with fair size rhubarbs though so hopefully it will go well. Might make it into wine.

I would suggest getting at least a few things that don’t require buying constantly new seeds. That is my longer term plan with things like the blackcurrants, take cuttings of the bush to propagate it further - it came with a label saying propagation is prohibited which I take as a challenge. Plant piracy!

Quick edit - also in my garden at home I am growing rosemary, sage and bay which are all doing well. Got mint in pots which is struggling a bit, partly from neglect. Should be ok if I water it a bit more. A large barrel for it to grow in could be nice tbh. Stick holes near the bottom on the side so the bottom holds a reservoir of water is also a tempting idea, as long as it’s a deep enough barrel that the standing water is reasonably below the surface.

farmgineer@nord.pub · 13 hours

Some of these questions will depend upon where in the world you are. Also, all soils are different and all plants have different needs so fertilizer isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, either. However, plants want to sprout and grow. I have potatoes growing in my compost heap because apparently they weren’t as done as I thought they were.

If you want a place to start, why not buy some young plants and try to keep those going? Just pick something that meets the sunlight and climate requirements of your area. Many will have tags telling you this information. Sure, it’s a bit more than seeds, but it might pay for itself in produce if you succeed. Mint is basically a weed so, if you like mint, that might be one that could fit.

After that, you might see what works and what doesn’t and buy some seeds. Best of luck!

Kirp123@lemmy.world · 12 hours

Just start small. You don’t need to start a full blown garden if that seems daunting. Just plant a few seeds, see what grows and what does well. Then next year you can expand if you can handle it and you have the experience from what grew well the previous year. Also I wouldn’t really bother with fertilizer to start, just plant the seeds and just water them depending on the weather (don’t need to water them if it rains).

Gardening is just like any other skill, you start small and basic and expand from there as you gain more experience and skills.

quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 hours

Depending on what you plan to grow you don’t need to buy seeds.

Tomatoes, you can squeeze the seeds out of a tomato and they will grow (better if it is a variety that is not an hybrid).
Garlic, each clove is a future plant.
Potatoes, cut them in half or into quarters if they big, let the cut part dry overnight and plant them.

What else? Unless you’re starting on a very empoverished soil, as others have said I wouldn’t worry about fertilisers. If I needed it I would buy a 25Kg bag of NPK and that would last me for years in a small garden. Depending on where you live that could be a bit challenging to buy, I live in a rural area so that is easy enough to find.