Last year was the first year I felt successful as a gardener. My husband built me a few raised garden beds and our little vegetable garden really flourished! This year I figured that I’d add in some flowers for a cut flower garden so I can have lots of blooms to decorate with. Here are some gardening tips for beginners so you can be successful too!

My first year gardening, I started my own seeds and put them in the garden in the backyard. The plants were small and weak. The soil wasn’t very healthy. Plus we had to remember to water it everyday (which didn’t always happen). Our dogs trampled lots of the plants. The result was fatal and I don’t think anything yielded from that crop.

After building my raised garden last year to much success, I feel confident with making our garden even bigger! I learned from my mistakes and thought I’d share what worked.

Thank you to Burpee Plants for sponsoring this post!

gardening tips for beginners

Tips for selecting plants

The first, and honestly, the most fun detail to consider is what you’ll plant. Here’s some guidelines to get you started.

Choose fruits and vegetables your family will actually eat! If you don’t eat something in your normal meals, don’t plant it. They’ll go to waste. Believe me, I know- my poor cucumbers didn’t get eaten at all last year. So I didn’t plant them this year.
Keep notes of what you plant and love and what goes to waste. This could be in your phone or in a garden journal, but at the end of the growing season note what worked and what didn’t so you can plant accordingly the next year. Last year we loved our strawberries so we expanded our patch to include 6 plants this year.

Another tip is to know your priorities with planting a garden are and plant accordingly.

Chemicals- Grow produce that will help to avoid pesticide. Some grocery store veggies like celery, tomatoes, spinach, peppers, and potatoes have higher amounts of pesticide used on their crops. By growing your own, you can reduce the chemicals you consume.
Costs- select veggies that are expensive to buy from the grocery store. Things like garlic, heirloom tomatoes, herbs, salad greens, and sweet bell peppers are costly to purchase and you can grow them for much less money.
Simplicity- choose vegetables that are easy to grow. If you’re a newbie at gardening or don’t want to spend a lot of energy outside, choose plants that don’t need much maintenance. Beans, garlic, squash, cucumbers, lettuce, scallions, and tomatoes are good for beginners.
Preserving- plant options that are good to store for the winter. Onions, potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, garlic, parsnip, and winter squash are all good to harvest with preserving in mind.

I love producing food right from my backyard! It makes healthy eating easier. It’s great to know where my food comes from and how fresh it is.

where to buy plants and what type

As a beginner, I’d suggest starting with established transplants. Instead of seeds, these are plants a nursery has begun and they are ready to go in the garden. I love Burpee Plants. They are easy to find at your local garden center. Click here to find a store close to you!

Put them in a spot with plenty of sun with good soil and water them and you’ll be successful!

This year I expanded my garden to include some flower gardens. I got a few flower varieties from PanAmerican Seed and am so excited to see them flourish! The Echinacea Artisan in yellow recently arrived and I can’t wait to see bloom. It’s a perennial too- so I can enjoy it for many years!

start small

Another tip I have is to start small. Start with a few raised beds or a small area of the garden. Focus on a handful of plants you really want to grow. That way it’s not overwhelming and you can learn in a manageable way. You can always grow more next year and build upon your knowledge.

My favorite quote is “little by little a little becomes a lot.” I picture myself becoming a master gardener by the time I’m in my golden years. That means every year I’m trying to experiment and learn a few things. Over time the things I’ve learned will compound and I’ll slowly get better. That sounds really lovely to me.

One example of learning a little at a time is that I noticed last fall my strawberry plants didn’t die off when my vegetable crops did. I left them in place and this spring they’ve come back! Strawberries are perennials and can survive a cold winter. I felt great expanding my strawberry patch knowing that I’ll get more than one season of growth out of them!

Over the years I’ve learned the power of focus. If you start with a few plants you can focus on them and make sure they’re thriving. Sometimes if you start too big with gardening, you’ll forget to water something or you’ll get overwhelmed with harvesting. Focus on a smaller garden and then expand it as you feel comfortable.

If you’re successful when starting small with gardening, it’ll help you keep going.

figure out how you’ll water your garden

Like I said before, the key ingredients with gardening are sunlight, good soil, a healthy plant, and water. With watering you need to be consistent- especially in the hot summer- to keep plants happy.

The simplest way to water a garden is to use a hose with a spray nozzle and water by hand or use a soaker hose that is placed in the garden. Get a long hose so it’s easy to water all your plants.

For my garden, my husband set up a drip irrigation system. He connected a hose to our sprinkler system and then there’s smaller emitters that water the roots of each plant. It’s more work up front, but then the garden is watered automatically daily! This is also really nice when we go on vacation because I don’t have to find someone to water or worry my plants will die.

the benefits of drip irrigation

Less labor. No worries about daily watering
Prevents disease. There’s less water contact with leaves, stems, and the fruit of plants.
Reduces weed growth. The soil between the plants remains dry which prevents weeds from growing.
Saves water. Only the roots are watered so less water is needed and evaporation is minimized.

look up any questions you have easily

If you have any gardening questions, just look them up online. I’ve Googled so many things with my garden! When starting my cut flower garden I searched each flower I thought of using to see if they’d work in a bouquet.

I’ve watched YouTube videos on knowing when to harvest certain plants. Also, if one of the plants in my garden isn’t doing well, I search the issue with the plant name to see if I’m overwatering, need to fertilize, or change locations for more or less sun. It’s so quick to just search on my phone and then learn a little here and there!

For gardening information, Burpee Plants’ website has great videos and resources with growing tips.

When planting my flowers, I have consulted the book “Cut Flower Garden” often. There’s a page for each flower that is commonly in a cut flower garden and gives individualized suggestions for different varieties. One of my garden beds is a Dahlia garden and reading “Discovering Dahlias” was so inspiring and got me really excited for a garden bed full of dahlias!

For general gardening books, I love Martha Stewart’s offerings. My favorite is Martha Stewart’s Gardening Month by Month. You can get a used copy on eBay for $5! It goes over how she created her Turkey Hill garden and I think it’s a good mix of charming and informative. The book Gardening 101 by Martha Stewart is also excellent.

tips for gardening with kids

My son Don is 7 and the other day I asked him to name 5 things that make him happy. Gardening made the list! I have a potting shed and he loves running in there to grab a sun hat, some gardening gloves, and a basket of tools so we can garden together. It is quality time that I cherish.

To make gardening time fun for him I let him have a say in what we plant. He LOVES harvesting flowers and will cut fresh flowers for the bouquets we keep in our kitchen. Another gardening activity he enjoys is watering the plants. When I planted everything he helped with placement and putting them in the ground. He’s a pro at loosening the roots before planting!

We’re excited for our veggies to be ready to harvest them before dinner.

One thing I love about gardening is all the lessons you can learn from being outside. I think it’s good for kids to know where food comes from. There’s life lessons too from gardening. For example, sometimes the best things- and plants- take time. And that big results can come from a small start.

I love the kid’s book “We are the Gardeners.” In the book, it goes over some of the life lessons while being charming with beautiful illustrations. My son and I have read it a few times and really enjoy it!

benefits of a raised garden

Here are some of the benefits of gardening from a raised bed-

No need to amend the soil. If you live somewhere with soil that isn’t ideal for growing things, you can mix your own soil that will allow for a better environment for plants.
Less bending over. Since they’re taller, they are easier to reach and maintain comfortably,
Can be built to fit any area. If you have a small or odd shaped yard, it’s easy to build a garden bed that fits any space. People in all types of dwellings can have a garden with raised beds!
Customizable for any style. You can use materials and paint colors to customize it to work with your home and style.
Little to no wedding. Since the soil is brought in and doesn’t have weeds or weed seeds, little to no weeding is required!
Better drainage. When using soil for a raised garden, use peat moss and compost in it to promote better drainage. Since raised garden beds have more height and better soil, they will generally drain better than a traditional garden.
Keep rodents out. The bottom of the raised garden beds can be screened to keep gophers and voles out.
Warmer soil. In the spring, the sun hits the garden beds and warms them up. This promotes earlier growth
Protect Plants. Having the plants elevated in the beds helps keep kids and pets from stepping on them.
The soil isn’t compacted. In a normal garden, the soil gets compacted under foot. That makes it harder for roots to expand. A raised garden provides more space for plants to really flourish.
The garden looks neater. The walls of raised beds keep soil in place, and pathways can be kept cleaner.

Disadvantages of a raised garden

Now that you’ve seen the pros of a raised garden, here’s the cons-

Cost. You have to buy soil and the materials to build or create a raised garden bed which can be expensive.
Time. It takes time the first year to build the beds and add in the soil.
You have to figure out watering. With raised beds, you need to determine how you’ll water them. We add drip irrigation, but that takes effort. A traditional garden is easy to water with a sprinkler attached to a hose. Or maybe there’s already an established sprinkler system.
Temperature of the soil. In the winter, the soil gets colder. This means that perennials need to be hardier to withstand the cooler temperatures. In the summer, soil gets warmer which isn’t always good for the roots. In the fall the soil cools down quicker which might cut the growing season shorter for some plants.

diy raised vegetable and flower garden beds

Want to learn how to make your own raised garden beds? Here’s a simple tutorial that’s great for beginners!

Yield: 3 Garden Beds

DIY Garden Beds

How to make raised diy garden beds that are easy. A step by step tutorial for how to build these from wood for small backyard vegetable gardens

Active Time 3 hours

Total Time 3 hours

Difficulty Medium

Estimated Cost $375

Materials

Instructions

Start by finding a good place for the garden. The biggest key factor is that it gets at least six hours of sunlight daily. Having access to water nearby is important as well.

Next, cut the wood.
cut 12 pieces of 36″ long pieces of the 10″ wide pressure treated wood
cut 12 pieces of 24″ long pieces of the 10″ wide pressure treated wood
cut 6 pieces of 18″ long pieces of the fence pickets

Pre-drill holes on both sides of the 36″ wide boards.

Then, simply screw them into the 24″ wide boards. And tada! You have a planter box (or the start of one). Repeat this step 6 times. You’ll need all 6 to create three DIY garden beds.

And now, stack two garden beds together. I liked having a height of 20″ because it is higher and easier to tend to the veggies.

To connect the two garden boxes into one taller one, use fence pickets cut down (mostly because they’re affordable and will do well outside). These are screwed on the inside of the garden beds. This gives the bed some nice stabilization.

Finally, it’s time to fill the planter boxes with soil. What I did was use “Mel’s mix” and combined 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost. This is a tested and true mixture.
Then, I cut pieces of lath boards and put them in a grid on top of the soil. They're just sitting above the dirt, but it gives each plant boundaries to each have a square foot to grow.

Next, stain the wood with white stain (or whatever color you'd like).

I also added little wood appliqués to the front for some decoration. That little touch of detail makes me happy!

Last, plant the garden with fruits, vegetables, or flowers.

Enjoy your beautiful DIY garden beds!

This year I added 3 more garden beds and I love how they look!

gardening supplies

Whenever I start something new, I like to buy some supplies that help me feel excited to work on the project. I rounded up some beautiful gardening supplies that are sure to make working outside even more lovely.

1. Floral and Leather gardening gloves / 2. Enamel Monogram Watering Can / 3. Pink Pruners with Daisy Case / 4. Burpee Metal Seed Packet Holder House Shaped! / 5. Boater Hat with Pink Gingham Trim / 6. Willow Basket for Harvesting / 7. Gardening Apron with Pink Daisy Motif / 8. Long Handled Gardening Tools by Burpee / 9. Vintage Burpee Seed Packet Art

I hope these gardening tips for beginners are helpful as you get started! The best way to learn gardening is by getting your hands dirty and going for it. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions in the comments.