9 Beginner Gardening Mistakes to Avoid

If you're a new gardener and you've made some

mistakes

, maybe last year's garden wasn't the best and you're really a little discouraged, then this video is for you. This is Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening, where my goal is to help you develop a greener thumb. I think we had between 16 and 18 million new gardeners in 2020, and all signs point to even more in 2021. And with new

gardening

, I remember my first time, I mean, I grew hydroponic cucumbers and they tasted absolutely horrible. I think my brother said he almost threw up when he ate them. And that's not a good sign.

It wasn't the best first harvest for me either. That's why, in today's video, I'm going to go over maybe nine or ten of the most common and devastating

gardening

mistakes

that will keep you from getting epic harvests. So you know what to do, grow that Like button and I will personally give you a money back guarantee that you won't make any gardening mistakes. By the way, this video is free. Sorry, but the money back guarantee isn't worth much. But let's get into the video. The number one mistake is placing your garden in an inconvenient location. It is very similar to exercising.

You know, you don't want it to be too difficult to get to your gym bag. You want your meals ready to go. I could probably get some advice there. But in the garden I have certainly mastered it. And that's because my gardens are easy to access. What you want to do is make it accessible and easy to work with, with low friction. Actually, for me, at least in my raised bed garden, that means a tall, raised bed. It really helps me. I'm quite tall and I don't want to bend down so much. Save my back. Again, another easy thing to do.

But these little things don't really even have to do with any gardening practices: fertilizing, watering, transplanting, sowing seeds. It's right where the garden is in the first place. It's a big mistake people can make when they're starting out. So make access easier and you'll have a much better time. Mistake number two is planting in an area that doesn't get enough sun, it's not a good place to plant. So it was there by my fireplace. This is my north facing wall. So this is facing north. This one is oriented from east to west. And the sun, of course, rises in the east and sets in the west.

So the pattern of my sun here on my property, it comes from there in the winter and ends right there. What does that mean? He doesn't get high enough right now to get over this wall and he doesn't get anywhere there either. And then what does that mean? In this bed I can't really plant much that needs a lot of sun. Therefore, a big mistake you can make, as a

beginner

gardener, is to plant things that are not adapted to the sun and light availability of an area. The best way to do this is observation. Maybe 8:00 a.m. m., 12:00 p.m. m., 4:00 p.m. m.;

Go outside and see where the shadows fall. And remember that this will actually change depending on the time of year. A really good resource that I will leave in the description. It will allow you to drag the months and show you how the sun will fall on your property. You can write your exact address. But again, remember that planting is the most important time. If you make a mistake when planting, you will have encased that plant in stone. Unless you are growing in a container, which is another great way to mitigate some of these mistakes. But remember, do not plant in an area that does not have enough sun for the plant you are trying to grow.

Mistake number three is planting too far from a water source. So I want to show you what I had to do. I do not have irrigation installed here at Epic Garden. I actually have ONE water outlet here on the side of my house that is located in a really inconvenient location. It's in the middle of my house, between the front and back yards. So I used a hose splitter here and then split it many times. Of course, I'm going to get irrigation. But the reason you don't want to do this is because, again, it's one of those lazy things.

If you are going to have to carry water, you may decide not to do it that day. And then the day gets too hot. The plants die and you're in a big world of pain. And again you killed some plants. You don't want to do that. So let me show you what I've done. Again, this is not the best solution. I'm still installing the irrigation here, but hey, if it works, it works. If it allows me access to water then I am happy. As I mentioned, the first thing I did was break this down. So we go to the front yard with one of the hoses.

Now what you could do here is use a standard hose. But I put this on a Hoselink, which is a hose bib that has a retractable reel right here. So this one can extend about 82 feet and it can go almost anywhere in this front yard. So I have perfect access to the front yard. The second hose goes through here. Let's go around the back. Again, if it works, it works. It's not the cleanest setup, but we've gone to another hose bib right here with the Hoselink. And I can access everything in this little temporary garden, as well as the entire backyard there.

Mistake number four, one that I admit I have made quite a bit, especially in my early years of gardening, is not respecting the power of mulch. We must respect the power of mulch. This is just a basic, recently modified potting mix. And sure, yes, I could plant it directly into this and I'm sure it would be fine. But I can reduce my watering needs, protect the soil, protect any type of splash disease by using some type of mulch. Now, if you've been watching this channel for a while, you know that I'm obsessed with this shredded straw mulch from a company called GardenStraw.

It's not available here in the US. I should have it available in my store around April 2021, but don't let the fact that you can't get the exact straw I use stop you from using mulch. There are many different things you can use. Of course, you can get straw in your own area. You can use grass clippings. You can use shredded leaves, fall leaves if you are in an area where a lot of leaves fall. I'm jealous, I'm not. And fall leaves are a fantastic cover. Now a couple of things to keep in mind with mulch. You want to make sure you put down a thick enough layer.

I would say at least two inches or so if possible. And just because it's here in a raised bed doesn't mean you should just mulch it. You should cover your in-ground plantings with mulch and you should also cover even smaller containers, like some grow bags or just some patio-style containers, with something like a straw. You can do it. It is very, very beneficial. It will reduce the amount you need to water. It will protect the surface of the soil and there are a million different ways to do it. I have a whole video on cheap sources of mulch that you should watch.

But remember to mulch your garden. Mistake number five is not preparing the soil, not taking the time to prepare it before planting. Now, if you're growing in a raised bed or container, that just means selecting the right container mix, which I'll be doing a video on this spring. But let's take this bed for example. This is the no-dig bed I made in collaboration with Charles Dowding. And many of you who watched that video will know that even during the making of that video I was criticizing my own process compared to Charles, who is the master of the no-dig garden.

And so I ended up making some changes to this bed based on some of the mistakes that I thought I had made and later learned I had made in soil preparation. So what I did here was add some pumice to this to lighten it up. I noticed I was having a little stunted growth here in the no-dig bed because I think the compost mix was holding too much water. Too much. And that was a soil preparation mistake that, if I didn't know about it and had a couple years of gardening under my belt, I would have left it alone.

And then these cabbage plants would have sat here doing nothing for three or four months because they don't have the ability to absorb nutrients and grow. So soil preparation. Now, if you are growing in soil, the first thing I wholeheartedly recommend, although it is a little annoying, is to get a soil test. You have to do this to know what type of soil you are working with. I have a video on some soil tests you can do yourself, but nothing beats going to your local nursery and saying, hey, can you put me in touch with someone who can do a soil test?

And they will give you not only the composition of your soil, but also the nutritional qualities of your soil, how much organic matter is in the soil. Are you deficient in any particular macronutrients and if you want, it's probably a little extra money, you can also get a heavy metals and salt report? Just to see if there's anything really weird about your soil, especially when you're planting soil in a new space because you just don't know what happened in the decades before you lived in this place. So soil preparation is a huge, huge mistake, which you can

avoid

, of course, by doing the preparation.

Mistakes number six and seven, I'm going to give you a two-part one here in this exact bed, is planting things that you don't like to eat. Here I have beets and kale. Fortunately, I have learned to like beets much more. I like to roast them now, but I've always loved kale. These are two things I enjoy eating. Now I think what a lot of

beginner

s will do is Google the easiest plants to grow, gardening tips for beginners and things like that. And then they'll just grow whatever that says without regard to whether you like to eat that plant.

Now, look, I love growing rare plants, unique plants, plants that I might not even like to eat. So I break this rule for the love of growing, for the love of the garden. I want to see something interesting and maybe I'll give it to someone else who likes it. But if you're trying to grow a garden for your family and maybe some friends and of course yourself, choose things that you really like to eat. It's kind of silly to grow something, spend all this time and care for it, only to never harvest it. And even if you harvest it and don't use it, it's a little waste.

And number seven, the second place here is that this is a pretty dense clump now that it's grown. But I must confess that when things got a little busy here at Epic Gardening, I didn't spend as much time on this particular one. bed as I would have liked. And then I have the beets that I direct sown and the kale that I direct sow. But I usually put a couple of different plants in each hole, a couple of different seeds, just to make sure something germinates. Now with beets it is not necessary to do that. Beets actually have a type of compound seed.

And what looks like one seed actually has several seeds inside. But you still have to dilute that. So you can plant, first, you can plant very densely seed by seed. So you can plant them too close together. But number two, you can't thin them after they've sprouted. So what happened in this particular bed? And of course, now it looks great and I'm very excited, no diseases, beautiful structure in the beets and kale. But what was happening before was that I had two, three floors right here, two, three floors right here, two, three, right there. The beets had a couple different beets all trying to grow next to each other.

And you can, they'll just be much smaller. And that's what happened. They were a little small, still healthy, but small. And as soon as I shrunk them down and gave them some room to breathe, they all grew in size. So while I come from small space gardening and love cramming plants into small spaces, you still have to respect that there is a certain limit above which you can cram things. Mistake number eight is planting things at the wrong time of year. . And I think this affects gardeners in warmer climates. More so than colder climate gardeners. Because gardeners in colder climates have one.

True beginning and end of your season with the dates of the first and last frost. And you can plant things a little earlier, a little late, of course. But you're not going to walk outside in the snow and say, oh, this is a good time to grow tomatoes. It's just not going to happen. While in the higher areas (zones nine, 10, 11) you can be fooled because it really is not too cold at any time. I would say maybe around 40 degrees Fahrenheit as an absolute minimum in some of these areas. And it seems like it's a time when you can plant almost anything.

And then I get questions from people saying, "Oh, I planted my tomatoes." I planted my, you know, my cucumbers and it's November. Will they do well? And the answer is technically yes, they're not going to die immediately because they know it's not the right time to plant them, but they're not going to thrive. And that is why you have to respect the time of year in which a plant wants to grow. Of course, a summer crop like a tomato or cucumber will do best from late spring into summer. You may be able to plant a second time if you are in a warmer area.But you really have to respect this.

And for me, in my warmer zone, I have to respect the fact that there are certain plants that like the cold that I just can't grow in the summer. I'm going to have a hard time growing cilantro, for example. Of course, I will find it difficult to grow lettuce leaves in full sun in summer. So right now in spring is the perfect time for me to grow some of those crops and preserve them, although maybe not for the lettuce and cilantro, but respect the season and you will have much more success. And if you want to know how to do it, what I suggest is that you watch my video on hardiness zones explained.

That will give you a general idea about it. And then, honestly, ask experienced gardeners, which brings us to our final advice. Our last mistake is not leaning on the experience of others. Gardening is a craft that has been passed down from generation to generation after generation, in all cultures around the world. And it's guaranteed that there are people alive right now, probably within a mile of you, who know far more than you will ever know about gardening. Because they have been doing it since they were 15 and now they are 80. And then ask them how they do things and lean on them.

There are a couple of different ways to do this. Number one, if you have someone in your neighborhood that you know the garden, he knocks on her door. I guarantee a gardener will want to talk to you about gardening until he or she turns blue. Number two, he can go to the local county extension office. Just Google your city and then extension office and it should appear. You can call them, you can email them. They are literally volunteers, master gardeners whose only job is to help you succeed in your climate and your area. And then thirdly, interact with the gardening community.

I actually created a Discord server for Epic Gardening. We have about 3000 people there right now sharing based on their location in the world. Depending on the type of crop they are growing. And it's basically like an online chat room. So check it out. I created it. We are having so much fun there right now! So I highly recommend you check it out. But until next time, I hope these tips help you

avoid

some mistakes in your next gardening season. Good luck in the garden. And it continues to grow.