Gardening has always been healing for me. Whenever I was going through infertility it was something to put my attention to and brought me joy. Gardening is something that requires attention, and patience, but also can be so rewarding! There will always be mistakes made each year no matter how experienced you are but the most important thing is to learn from those mistakes and just try again next year. Each year my gardens have gotten better and better and trial and error is just a part of the process. Gardening has brought me so much joy and I hope it does for you too!

If you’re a gardener yourself or want to get into gardening, I wanted to share my top gardening tips and everything I use in today’s blog post. These items have worked so well for me and are everything you need to get started or maintain your garden!

My Gardening Tips

Order of what you put in your garden bed:

1. Cardboard
2. Sticks and logs (to take up space and fertilize it)
3. Topsoil 
4. Second half use organic raised bed soil found at Lowe’s

After the first year, you just will need to add in back some topsoil and top with organic raised bed soil, Azomite, and worm castings. 

After you plant everything:

Sprinkle Azomite and worm castings to go around plants in soil.

Bug tips: 

Spray thieves spray morning or night to help with bugs. Thieves Spray Recipe HERE!

More of My Top Tips

1. Start small.  Don’t try to do a bunch of veggies the first year. In our first year, we just did tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil!  Less is more. Add in a new veggie or two each year!
2. I recommend growing cherry tomatoes over large tomatoes. You will get a bowl per week and it’s way more rewarding.  The season is much longer too! Sometimes we would wait months for one large tomato to grow and by the time it was ready it would split or an animal would eat it.  For strawberries, you want to put a strawberry net over it. Birds love strawberries and this prevents them from eating them. Also, put straw/hay at the base of the plant to prevent strawberries from rotting easily. 
3. Cucumbers grow BIG. To save room, put a little fence trellis for it to grow up. We did that and it worked well. In years past they would take over our yard. 
4. HERBS: make sure you prevent any herbs from flowering. Always prune away because once they flower they mature and don’t really grow more leaves.
5. Water in the morning or evening but not during the middle of the day. It’s best to do it when it is cooler so water doesn’t evaporate.

Plants that grow easily for us (in Indiana):

• Cherry tomatoes
• Jalapenos
• Basil
• Cucumbers
• Radishes
• Lettuce (must be planted early. Doesn’t last during summer in hot temps)
• If you grow cilantro look for bolted cilantro. It grows AMAZING! I’ve never gotten regular cilantro to grow in the past.

My Gardening Essentials

Here is everything I use to maintain my garden! Gardening is hard work but with the right supplies, it is so fun and can really be so rewarding. If you don’t have a space where you can plant a garden, I highly recommend this self-watering smart garden that has the space for a few plants and even waters itself! This would be great on a windowsill or outside on a patio or balcony.