Time To Get Growing!

It’s a great time of year to get your hands dirty! Whether your focus is flowers or food, now is the time to get tiny green things into the ground—or into the pots or planter boxes. Gardening can have huge benefits: boosting moods, reducing stress, beautifying our homes and streets, and supplementing our diets with the freshest possible nutritious foods. We’ve ‘dug up’ a few key tips plus some great resources to help you have a super successful growing season.

Transplanting Seedlings

Maybe you started some seedlings from seeds a few weeks ago, or maybe you’re planning a trip to your nearest garden centre to gather a few trays of your favourite starter plants (plus whatever strikes your fancy when you get there!)—at some point your new tiny sprouts have to spread their roots, and it’s your job to help them do it! Start leaving them outside for increasingly long periods and ease off the fertilizer leading up to the transition.This is often called ‘hardening-off’ the plants, which means gradually getting used to outdoor life, which is a lot cooler. You can start preparing the soil that will be their new home, loosening it, removing rocks and weeds and working in fresh compost, watering it in advance, and even warming it up with landscaping fabric. Transplanting them from one set of soil conditions to another you essentially need to make sure the change isn’t too much of a shock for the delicate young plants.

The Old Farmers Almanac, as you might expect, has a really great, detailed breakdown of this whole process, which you can find here.

Taking Advantage of Tiny Spaces

When we think of ‘vegetable gardens’ or ‘flower beds’ that can bring up ideas of large, leafy spread out spaces full of a whole range of plants. This doesn’t have to be the case! There are a lot of ways to utilise limited spaces, or, even if you have a big patch going, to take advantage of those ‘extra’ corners. And pots on balconies, front steps, or even window sills can produce a really satisfying amount for you. Many plants have been bred specifically for small spaces—’dwarf’ varieties, for example—and any garden centre can help you find these among their selections of seeds and seedlings. Vine plants, like pole beans, will grow upwards instead of outwards, and a bit of research will help you plan a mini-garden with a rotation of plants that will produce crops throughout the season, many of which can be planted together and will just be dominant at different times. This concept also works if you don’t have space for both a flower garden and a vegetable garden but can’t decide between the two. Just plant them both together!

Again, your local garden centre will be a great resource for helping you plan your tiny garden projects, and The Spruce has a pretty detailed overview to get you started.

Getting Kids Into the Garden

What could be more fun for little ones than playing in dirt?? Getting actively involved in growing things and learning about gardens, from plants to pollinators, is wonderful activity that gets kids into the fresh air and really helps them learn about the world. It can be truly magic for young children to watch a tiny seed or bean turn into a big leafy plant, and you get to experience that magic through their eyes! Kids Gardening is a great website that has a TON of information and different resources. One of our favourite sections is their collection of Garden Activities that all have suggested grade levels and lay out detailed, easy to follow plans for great projects like: Container Gardening for Kids; a Bug Hunt with a focus on pollinators; Seed Paper—plantable DIY paper with wildflower seeds; and a Grow Your Own Salad plan.

We hope this has offered some inspiration, basic info, and useful resources to help you nurture some beautiful green things. Happy growing friends!