In this article, I’m going to be looking at how to take care of a garden.
Plants particularly flowers and vegetables require regular garden maintenance for healthy growth and productivity.
In a short answer: to take care of your garden, your garden plants need timely watering, pruning, mulching, fertilizer application, deadheading, weeding, supplementation with inorganic nutrients, and thinning to allow proper passage of air in and out of the garden.
Read on for a detailed step-by-step guide on how to take good care of garden vegetables and flowers.
Here is how to take care of your garden:
1. Mulch the Garden Bed
Mulching can be described as a gardening technique used to prevent weeds and grasses from growing. Mulching also helps keep the garden bed moist and conserve temperature.
So, after you are done with planting, it is good to mulch or covers the garden bed with mulching materials such as straw, sawdust, and wood chips.
This can help suppress the growth of weeds that will be competing with your garden plants against nutrients, water, and space.
Related: How To Transplant Plants Without Killing Them
2. Water the Garden Timely
Water is required by seeds to carry out proper germination and seedlings growth. Water is also required by overgrown plants to Carry out photosynthesis and other plants’ physiological activities.
Therefore, you need to timely supply and irrigate your garden plants with water. Plants such as vegetables require more water. Likewise, plants like flowers also need regular watering. However, plants like succulents can survive with a little supply of water.
Therefore, it is important to understand the type of garden plants and their water requirements.
It is important to note that watering sometimes may be tricky. This is because, during watering, you may overwater or underwater your garden plants. And both overwatering and underwatering have negative effects on the growth and productivity of plants.
Overwatering of plants may cause damping up, which can lead to rotting of plants’ roots. Excessive watering can also cause pest infestation and disease occurrence in your garden. While under watering on the other hand may cause plants wilting, yellowing of leaves, and plants death.
So, it is important to pay close attention while you are irrigating your garden plants. However, this solely depends on the growing season. If it is during the hot season that is during summer, your garden plants may require daily watering.
But, if it is during the cold season such as spring or fall, 1-2 times watering will be sufficient to keep the plants healthy.
With regard to the amount of water, you can irrigate plants, that only depends on the type of soil. If it is loamy soil, water the garden bed to the point of your finger knuckle.
Find out a detailed guide about the amount of water that is required to irrigate garden plants from here and here
3. Avoid Spraying Water on Leaves
It is a good gardening practice while irrigating garden plants to avoid watering on plant leaves. This is because water can increase the moisture on leaves, which provides a conducive environment for the growth of pests and diseased-pathogens.
Related: How To Grow Plants From Seeds Step By Step
4. Weed the Garden Bed Timely
Weeds are off-plants or undesirable plants on the garden, which grow and occupy garden space and compete with garden plants against nutrients and water.
So, as a gardener, you need to avoid this weed appearance in your garden by removing weeds and grasses tamely.
You can do this by closely keeping an eye on a new emergence of weeds or grasses, and remove them manually by hand. By so doing, you can make your garden weed-free.
But, if you left the weeds to become overcrowded in the garden, you can find it difficult to remove the weeds manually by your hand.
You can also use herbicide. However, this is not recommended, if you are practicing organic gardening.
Read also: How Does A Plant Grow Step By Step
5. Deadhead Old and Abnormal Flowers
Remove old flowers and those infected with diseases or those that are dried. This can help provide space for new flowers to bloom.
Flowers deadhead is useful for preventing the spread of diseases. This is because when the infected flowers are left unremoved, they may touch the neighboring flowers, leaves, and fruits and so spread the disease to them. This can be carried on like this.
But, if the infected flowers are cut, you reduce the chance of the disease been spread.
6. Timely Check your Garden for abnormal Symptoms
Watch your garden closely for any new abnormal Change. Look at the garden soil, plant leaves, stems, and fruits and check if there is pest infestation, disease occurrence, or natural disasters.
Remove and burn diseased or dead leaves stems or the entire plant from the garden to stop the spread of diseases.
Check if there is any change in leaves color and then do what you can do to keep the abnormalities to normal or under control. If you can’t solve the problem, consult your local Gardner for help.
Watch for intruders such as pests. Pests such as rodents, insects, and humans can damage your entire effort at one strike. So, pay extra attention to maintain and keep your garden intact and guarded against these pests.
7. Avoid Overcrowding Plants
If you grow your garden plants from seeds, there is a high chance they will become too much or overcrowded on the garden. You need to avoid this overcrowding by thinning the extra seedlings.
Thin excess seedlings to create space for the passage of air into the garden. This can also reduce competition by plants against nutrients and water, which is when left uncontrolled can limit your garden productivity and growth.
Plants’ competition against nutrients, space, and water can lead to premature leaves fall, stunted plant growth, and poor yield.
8. Prune the Garden Plants Timely
When the garden plants grow and form a dense canopy, trim the excess leaves and cut stems to reduce the canopy.
This can help allow sun and oxygen to penetrate and reach the short plants. Leaving the dense canopy without clearing can attract pests and can also lead to the death of shorter garden plants.
Diseased-pathogens also thrive well under unventilated, damped, and bushy garden. So, timely prune and pinch your garden and keep the garden growing beautiful and successful.
9. Consider Crop Rotation
Some plants add nutrients to the soil while other plants take nutrients more than what they add to the soil. In this case, as a good practice, you need to divide your garden into different beds and rotate the vegetables. This way, you can maintain the soil fertility as well as improving the quality of the garden.
Learn about crop rotation from here and here
10. Avoid shade
This is especially important for vegetable gardens. Vegetables require sunlight for at least 14-16 hours. And so, when you keep vegetables under the shade, there is a high chance that they will die up.
So, avoid shade for those plants that require more sunlight by cutting down trees and other structures that shade the garden.
This will be easier if the garden spot was selected with the right knowledge in the first place. Learn more on how to select a good garden spot.
11. Keep Garden Tools Clean before and after Use
Ensure that you keep all garden tools are clean before and after garden activities. You can use chlorine bleach to disinfect the garden tools.
The benefit of cleaning your garden tools is to protect the garden from been infected by diseased-pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses. These small organisms love dirty environments and so when you left your garden tools uncleaned, the pathogens can infect the garden plants and damage the entire efforts you put in the garden.
Frequently asked Questions
How do you garden for the first time?
Starting a garden is not that very difficult. You only need to learn some basic gardening skills and you are done. Start with choosing a good garden spot. Then, look for seeds that will grow on this garden spot without a problem. Finally, feed your garden and take care of it.
Learn more about starting a new garden from our ultimate beginner’s guide to making a new garden
Should I remove old Roots Before Planting?
Plants’ roots can sometimes become a problem to the young growing plants if the old roots are not decomposed properly.
They can block the young growing roots from growing down the soil, and this can limit your plant’s water and nutrients absorption capacity.
Therefore, it is good while you are preparing your garden spot for planting to remove old roots, large rocks, and debris in the soil.
Learn more on how to prepare a garden spot
How do I get rid of Grass to start a Garden?
You can remove grasses either manually with hand, hoe, or with herbicides. If the new garden spot is large and bushy, you can employ the use of a tractor. Then, after uprooting the grasses, use a rake and garden fork to clear and rake the grasses from the new garden spot.
Wrapping Up
Taking care of your garden is the most part of gardening activities that cannot be avoided. Your garden needs regular and sometimes timely care for the garden to grow healthy and beautiful.
In this article, I took the time to discuss the gardening maintenance activities that can be done to keep the garden growing healthy and beautiful.
I hope the article will be of excellent help to you in understanding how to take good care of your garden. I should love to hear from you. So, do write to me in the comments section below.
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