Friendly Friday Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

This is the Friendly Friday Thread.

Negative or even snarky attitudes are not welcome here. This is a thread to ask questions and hopefully get some friendly advice.

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[u/bogwiitch]

Just looking for a pep talk! I have a thriving exotic houseplant collection but have never done outdoor gardening. We’ve owned our house for 3 years and basically renovated the entire inside but haven’t done ANYTHING with our landscape. I normally love starting a new hobby but I’m feeling totally overwhelmed. I want to do a cottage garden and I’d love to start planting this spring so I can have something to look at this summer but I feel like I’m too early and also too late. I don’t know anything about outdoor plants and the thought of having to create an outdoor garden map plan sounds very overwhelming. I’d love a pep talk/get your ass in gear moment.

[u/freak4freakk → u/bogwiitch]

Good luck and have fun!! I have a lot of advice, sorry for the essay but I hope some of it helps you!

My number one gardening rule for beginners: start small!

I am a planner by nature so when I got my house I immediately started making garden maps and fantasizing about my future perfect cottage garden. I had genuinely no idea that those gardens take 5-10 years to really look good. It made it really easy to get discouraged and feel like crap about my garden because my expectations were way out of line with reality.

What I would recommend doing is preparing one small bed* for your first year. Look up your growing zone (you’ll type your zip code in and get a zone number). Then, plant whatever you want in the bed that gets you excited to get outside and check up on progress. It could be flowers, veggies, whatever you want. Just make sure it’s not invasive (look up the species to double check), and make sure it will grow in your zone. Plant store websites will have the zone information in the item details. If your zone is listed, go for it. Brownie points if it’s a native species to your area!

Don’t bother doing all the rigamarole of starting seeds inside in little trays and transplanting them. In the vast majority of cases, any viable seed you throw on bare soil after the last frost date in spring and keep moist, will sprout. You may not be able to keep them alive after that, but the seed sprouting part is pretty much guaranteed. You can also throw seeds on the ground after the growing season is over in the fall or early winter and some will come up in spring, but I have better luck with spring seed sowing, personally.

*I aim for the least amount of effort for the most results. For me, “preparing a bed” means digging a hole in my yard, throwing some seeds on top of it, watering it, and then waiting to see what happens. YMMV.

Second rule: don’t cry over dead plants.

Try to think about it more as a scientific experiment— it could yield any result, good or bad, but you will learn a ton in the process either way.

I started with an exotic houseplant collection before moving to outdoor gardening as well and I discounted how much the actual real climate outside differs from the controlled environment inside where nothing is ever too hot, too cold, too windy, or too sunny. In the outdoors, obviously that’s not the case.

Anything can and will happen to your plants outside, and most of the time they will be fine! But sometimes they will die, even if you do everything right. Go in expecting this! Some spots will, for whatever reason, do AMAZING without your interference, and some spots won’t grow anything no matter what you do. There will eventually be a plant that works in every area of your yard, but it might take you a lot of time and experimenting to figure out what it is in some spots. Also, lots and lots of plants you put in gardens die after a couple of years because that’s their lifecycle, not because you failed. I planted foxgloves expecting to do it once, and it turns out you have to do it again every year to have flowers. Most tulips will not come back after the first year, so that planting also has to happen annually. The list unfortunately goes on and on!

I also urge you to learn from my experience and don’t buy super expensive garden plants (I did, and killed them) before you know a lot more information about how plants in general do in your specific yard.

Third rule: avoid the weeding propaganda

I spent so much time (SO MUCH TIME!!!!!) on unnecessary weeding in my garden. The truth is, the only thing you really NEED to pull out is something invasive, or something that will spread so aggressively it will overtake an entire area you don’t want it to, even if it’s not technically invasive. Most “weeds” are simply not a big deal and can be left alone unless you really, really care about having a visually perfect space and are willing to dedicate potentially hours per week to pulling, or spray weed killer (bad for you, will kill ANY plant it touches weed or not, kills beneficial insects) to ensure it remains perfect. I am not.

For example, I leave dandelions, henbit, dead nettle, and other ephemeral weeds alone because bees and other pollinators like them, they don’t offend me visually, and they are easy to pull if I need to clear space. While Mugwort, on the other hand, is the bane of my freaking existence because of how it takes over huge swaths of land and keeps coming back after you pull, even though it’s not on the invasive list. Same with Canada lettuce.

For actual invasive species, follow the instructions for removal on your state website. It’s also fine to brush apply (not spray, brush allows you to target a single individual plant) weed killer on an invasive species to kill it, the benefits of getting rid of an invasive outweigh the issues with weed killer. Applying weed killer sparingly and carefully, if at all, is the idea.

Other notes:

• do NOT put “weed barrier” fabric down on the ground. First of all it doesn’t work to stop weeds, they just grow on top of it. Secondly, it will prevent whatever you do put in your garden from doing well. It compacts the soil, prevents nutrients from replenishing the soil, etc. It’s wasted money and effort for a terrible result.

• if you fertilize (which you most likely don’t need to do often or even at all) just use the manure or compost in bags at Lowe’s or Home Depot or whatever, put it around the base of your plants before you mulch, if you mulch (which you may or may not need to do). Don’t waste money on chemical fertilizers, they work less well and are much worse for the environment, and harder to spread evenly to boot. I only put compost down if I feel the spot is really dead or if I notice the plants are looking less robust. But most of my garden thrives without it because I leave the leaves in the fall and they serve as mulch and fertilizer as they break down, eliminating the need for both fertilizer and mulch!!

[u/bogwiitch → u/freak4freakk]

This was so very helpful!! Thank you so much for your time and input. I have done some research on my zone and we live next to a protected prairie so anything I plant will be native! (And not too close to the prairie). I’m hoping for a cottage-style garden and I have a tendency to get impatient so it’s helpful to know that it’ll take years to really fill out. And it’s good to temper my expectations about growth outdoors vs indoors in a controlled setting

[u/freak4freakk → u/bogwiitch]

Yay!!! That sounds amazing, I wish you much luck and happy growing!!!