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Growing Garden, Step-By-Step

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Easy Gardens - Almost anyone can do it, no equipment or physical strength required

Starting a garden in Florida - or anywhere else for that matter - might seem an overwhelming task. Of course, every place has it's own challenges for the gardeners but where I garden, there's no soil, just acidic, white sand that doesn't even drain very well.

It doesn't sound very promising to start a garden, does it?

I succeeded anyway - I found my own way, learning through trial and error.

What I did and how I did it step-by step is described in text and my own photos in this lense.

My way might also work for different (than Florida's) climates as well but you'll have to find that out for yourself.

I'm no master gardener or anything like that. I simply love plants, especially flowers and herbs and I take loads of photos of everything that's growing around my house.

If you can find just one useful tip on this page, my lense has served its purpose. Thank you for checking it out!

step 1

Decide What Kind of Bed You Want

How to start a garden

For easy maintenance any bed should be no more than 2 feet across, regardless of the shape. If wider, you'll need some stepping stones to make your gardening chores easier accessible.

One of my favorite raised beds is simple round bed. I plant a banana tree in the middle and then around I grow anything, from flowers to lettuce, carrots, parsley and other herbs and even spaghetti squash and such.

Any kind of bed looks really neat and tidy if bordered with concrete edgers. They are cheap and you can lay them down yourself. The only thing you need to pay attention to is that the surface underneath the edgers needs to be flat.

When it's not, make it flat with sand and rocks. When your edgers fit together tightly, the soil and the water (during watering or raining) will stay inside your raised bed, where they belong.

step 2

Prepair the Ground

How to grow garden

Since in this Florida sand veggies wouldn't grow, at least not without adding a lot of manure or compost or a mix of soil-nourishing goodies, tilling the ground alone wouldn't do much to improve the growing conditions.

So I choose the easy way and simply cover the ground with thick layer of newspapers, cartons and egg cartons (not the foam ones!). This way I recycle newspaper and carton boxes and the base for my garden bed is free.

This layer that slowly disintegrates has the following benefits:

+ it prevents weeds from underneath the layer to grow in your garden

+ it keeps gardening dirt from being washed away

If you're starting your garden on the lawn and this is not too difficult for you to do, I would recommend to dig and lift out the turf layer and turn it upside down before laying the newspaper-carton layer on the ground. This will aerate the soil, improve the drainage and the grass will turn into compost faster.

This lens is a work in progress

Would you like to share your gardening experiences?

Thanks for visiting!

  • miaponzo Mar 21, 2012 @ 1:38 am | delete
    Simple but amazing :)
  • aj2008 Nov 2, 2011 @ 3:43 am | delete
    Looking forward to seeing how your garden develops. Remeber to keep a camera with you as you work, because personal photos will make this lens unique to you ;)

    We created our garden from nothing 14 years ago. All we had was a couple of mature apple trees (lucky us) and about four shrubs. It looks very different now and many of the plants have persoanl stories attached to them. We even have one plant that came from a cutting in my Dad's garden and that one came from my Grandmother's garden, so it is lovely to think that I have something of Nan's in my garden as she loved gardening too.
  • SereneSea Aug 27, 2011 @ 7:52 pm | delete
    Gardening is not so difficult, neither is it simple; but there is joy in seeing plants growing and flowers blooming.
  • poutine Jan 12, 2011 @ 3:09 pm | delete
    I'm glad you found your own way to deal with gardening.

    I'm still experimenting.
  • OrganicGiftsByDiana May 22, 2009 @ 6:38 am | delete
    Hi Daria !
    I would LOVE to have a banana tree too !
    I would love to be able to grow other tropical plants too like citrus trees and pineapple outdoors.

    Glad to see you have found a way to have your own garden :)

    Organically Yours,
    Diana
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daria369

Hi,
My name is Daria of DariasWorld.info and I have many interests.
Above all, I love researching and traveling - as much as possible in real life and... more »

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