Top 5 Clever Gardening Tips and Ideas for Beginners

Maintaining a beautiful home garden is a lot of labor, but with these great gardening techniques, you can work more efficiently—and put less burden on your wallet.

• Start with healthy soil in your garden – for nutrient-rich planting beds, work in compost, manure, or dried peat moss. The amended soil is lighter, drains better, is easier to weed, and encourages roots to establish themselves faster.
• Construct an indoor garden – set up a multitiered indoor garden inside your house if you are short on space. Shade-loving perennials and compact shrubs should be planted in adequately sized containers, which should be placed on plant stands of varying heights. Alternatively, you can get wall planters or some cute modern plant pots.
• Fertilize more intelligently – use time-release fertilizers to nourish gardens and plant pots over an extended period of time. You won’t have to fertilize as often this way.
• Make an investment in native flora – purchase enhanced varieties of natural plants and grasses in your area. They’ll flourish with little attention and are likely to be the most attractive plants in your garden.
• Don’t reuse soil – never grow the same vegetables in the same plot of soil for two or more years in a row; instead, rotate them to keep your soil rich in the nutrients that each variety of plant need.