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To preface, I’ve been growing a garden in some capacity all of my life. My dad and both grandmothers were avid gardeners, so I grew up “helping” in the garden and certainly picking produce fresh from the plant. When I became an adult, I lived with my parents and helped them with their garden, tried a few projects of my own (like growing garlic), and whatever we didn’t grow, we could easily get from my family members who are market growers. Fresh, organic produce abounded!

When I got married and moved, however, I started from scratch again. I didn’t know what produce I could find locally, nor did I know what grew well in the slightly different climate. I knew I wanted to grow a garden, but this would be the first time I actually did the entire thing by myself, and I was excited to give it a shot!

My goal? To try it.

I didn’t have high expectations of bountiful, high-quality harvests the first year. I simply wanted to try it and see what would happen. It was a year of experimentation and growth, in our garden as well as our personal lives.

Though we harvested a decent number of tomatoes, peppers, okra, green beans, and even a few summer squash, the lessons I pulled from the garden were more valuable than the vegetables themselves. (Especially considering I got a bad case of double pneumonia at the beginning of August that basically ended my gardening efforts a few months earlier than planned.)

Anyway, here are the lessons I learned from my first year of gardening:

1: Don’t Start Your Seedlings Too Early

My first mistake started months before the frost had passed, when I planted my tomato and pepper seedlings indoors. I was itching to get started, so I put together the grow shelf and gathered all of the supplies I’d need for my seedlings. Oh, the promise of a fresh season! You know the feeling. 😉

In my haste, I ended up with foot-tall tomato plants well before I actually could plant them. And I eventually did plant them outside a bit earlier than I probably should have, just because I was afraid they were going to die because they were simply getting too large.

I now know that peppers and tomatoes only need a short while to get started, especially if I don’t want to worry too much about transplanting multiple times. On the flip side, my pepper seeds just didn’t germinate, so I ended up having to buy a few pepper plants. But that could have been the year.

Definitely worth calculating your planting dates using something like this calculator or garden planning app.

2: The Fence is Worth It

When my husband and I first met the neighbors, three of the four grew some kind of garden at some point, and all of them mentioned the deer getting into them. That clued us in early that without a fence, our gardening efforts would be lost. So my husband went all in and bought me an amazing electric fence setup with a solar generator and wire and posts! (We knew we’d use it one way or another, so it was more of an investment.)

That was the perfect investment.

Granted, it was just the first year. But we didn’t have any large critters in the garden as a result. It kept out the deer and neighborhood dogs, AND didn’t hurt in the rabbit and squirrel departments either, so I can’t complain. 🙂

3: Find a Way to Work Around Limitations

I am a paradox. In the middle of summer allergy season, I remember sitting in the vehicle with my husband, sneezing my head off. He looked at me and said, “And you LIKE living on a farm???”

I laughed. He’s right, haha.

On the one hand, I love homesteading. I love gardening, being outside, and even keeping animals (though I’m not as good at that part). But my allergies are pretty bad for half the year, the same half when you’re out doing the gardening stuff.

This year, I was reminded again that I need to find ways to work around those limitations:

• Use some sort of drip tape system, so I don’t have to water every single day in the dead of summer. (Normally, this would be a luxury, but my dad had a system he doesn’t want and offered it to me for free, so I’m taking it.)
• Use ground cover to minimize weeding. I tried to tough it out this year, but then I got some deeply discounted ground cover from a local store…and I do wish I’d done it earlier. I used cardboard this year, which helped some. But it would have been a lot fewer weeds if I’d just used the ground cover from the beginning. Next year, that’s the plan.
• Focus on growing things in the seasons when I can actually be outside. I already started this year. I planted five rows of garlic that someone gifted me. I also tried my first winter garden pitted cold frame experiment. If that works, I’ll probably expand into off-season growing. It’s still productive, but with WAY less pollen.

4: Grow What Works in Your Sunlight Situation

I knew going into the growing season that we have less than ideal amounts of sunlight in our garden. We live in an area with a lot of timber, and our house sits among some very old oaks, maples, walnuts, and pines. The backyard doesn’t get a lot of sun, even though we situated the garden in the very spot that receives the most possible daylight.

It really did make a difference though. My tomatoes set fruit, but they took forever to ripen, as did the peppers. Everything seemed like it took twice as long to mature.

(Also, it could be that I haven’t perfected the watering, weeding, or fertilizing yet. So that’s definitely related!)

But I think the shade was a bigger issue than I expected. Next year, especially now that I know what I can get from the farmer’s market, I’ll probably focus more on crops that like shade, like leafy greens. Anything we can shave off the produce bill, the better.

5: Cheaper Doesn’t = Better

We had a lot of upfront gardening expenses this year, which is pretty normal for newlyweds trying to establish their lives together for the first time. But that also meant I wanted to find as much as possible used or discounted…like a garden hose. And we did! But it wasn’t quite long enough to stretch from the house hydrant to the garden.

I ran to Walmart and bought the cheapest hose available.

Then the first hose connector broke.

So I ran to Walmart and bought another hose.

Which promptly sprung a leak a month later that I couldn’t repair.

Moral of the story? Saving money can make you pay more money later if you aren’t careful, ugh.

Conclusion

So those are the five biggest lessons I learned in the garden this year. I’m sure next year, I’ll learn even more! 😉