Can you help me garden my garden?
Posted by admin on Aug 14, 2010 in home decor | Subscribe
I want to begin a garden. I really don't have any gardening tools and I planted seeds about 1 or 2 weeks ago. They have not shown any growth and my dog often steps over where I planted them at? Do you know if that would affect the growth? Any suggestions?
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First you need to start with the basics:
1) The plot. Where did you place your garden bed? You’ll want it in a low traffic area where it won’t get trampled (you’re NEVER suppose to step on your growing soil!). You also need somewhere where your bed will get full sun (8 hours of sun daily)
2) The soil. Your soil will need to be very loose so the roots can grow. Start by hoeing your ground to make the soil very loose and airy. Also, pull any weeds in the area. Weeds will compete with seedlings for light, water, and air. It would also help to add compost or manure to your soil. I know the ground in my back yard wouldn’t grow anything but weeds if I didn’t add tons of peat moss, compost, and manure. lol You can just go to a garden center and pick up two or three bags and work it into your soil. So make sure you’ve got nice nutrient rich soil or you won’t be able to grow anything but weeds and crabgrass.
3) The Plants. What are you growing? Some plants (like broccoli, radishes, carrots, lettuce, and kale) like cooler weather and are best planted either in early spring or late summer. Other plants (like tomatoes, cucumber, melons, peppers, pumpkins, squash, beans and corn) are strictly warm weather plants and do best in the heat of the summer. So if you were trying to plant tomato seeds, they might not have grown because it’s too cold. It’s taking my squash seedlings quite a while to sprout becuase of the cooler weather we’ve had in recent days. Do a little bit of research on each plant that you’re growing to figure out specific needs for each plant. I’ve included a link to the website that I use to get quick, detailed information about the plants I’m growing.
There’s a number of reasons that your seeds aren’t growing. Depending on the size of the seeds, they could have gotten washed away with some rain. Small seeds like tomato, lettuce, carrot, or pepper seeds could have wshed away if you had rain recently (but if you have larger seeds [like pumpkin, watermelon, squash or cucumber] this most likely isn’t the case). It could also be the temperature. Like I mentioned earlier, some plants like cool weather and some prefer warmer weather. If you’re planting warm weather crops in cool weather, it could simply be too cold for the seeds to sprout. Or your dog may have trampled seedlings as they were coming up. Another explaination could be that you’re not watering them enough. Seeds need to be wet almost constantly for them to sprout.
I hope this helped! Good luck gardening!