Gardening For Beginners

Do you come home from work, tired and stressed out to the point that all you want to do is pop a microwave dinner in the microwave, toss back a few and sit and vegetate the rest of the evening in front of the T.V. or play a video game?

Perhaps you have had a frustrating day dealing with your employees, boss, people in general, traffic, failure, children, spouse and the list goes on. You work hard but there seems to be little to show for all your efforts.

Then I suggest it is time for a new hobby: vegetable gardening!  There is much to be said for running one's fingers through the soil, planting seeds, nurturing plants and finally eating/canning what you have grown.

As we work in our garden, the stress and frustration of the day will transfer itself from our fingers into the soil and be replaced by a feeling of contentment and joy.

Why? Because in the beginning we were all farmers. There is an inherent nature within us that cries out to grow something.

Vegetable gardening is fun, exciting and a lot of hard work. There is also some disappointment and frustration when our seeds do not take on the life we had hoped they would or when an insect, weather or disease takes out our plants. We have great success with one plant one year and the next year it does nothing. Gardening is like gambling only the odds are worse. If you keep this in mind you will always have a good attitude.

And there is always the heat for some areas. In temperatures over 90 degrees, plants just will not do well no matter how much water we put on them. Even okra stumbles a bit in the excessive heat.

Or an unexpected cold front comes in. We had some green bean buds that had turned into little tiny green beans. We had an early cold front that took out the green beans. They predicted the temp would get down to 28. We had our plants protect down to 26. It got down to 25. We lost all of our little green beans.

More on Gardening for Beginners

In today’s market, it seems we pay almost $1 for a can of green beans. The can is half bean and half water, and now in days, the vegetables are not even grown or canned in the United States. 

If you shop Wal-Mart, then you know that Pumba is a Chinese brand. It is cheap but not sure I trust the source. I have heard of all sorts of things done to food in China to cheat Americans.

As you look through our gardening site, you may be getting ideas about your own garden. We talk about mulching, composting, and many other subjects. We also put some of our own life in here and a thing or two that might be helpful outside of gardening.

As you will see, I post both the good and the bad. It would be easy for me to hide my mistakes but I post them as well so that we can all learn from them.

For more in depth research, go to the web--but take what you read and see with a grain of salt. Not everything posted to the web is true.

Go get the shovel!

Learn About Planting And Growing Cucumbers