Vegetable Gardening for Beginners: 5 Mistakes to Avoid

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Do you want to grow a vegetable garden? When we moved into our current home it came with a soccer field sized vegetable garden. My first year of gardening was chalked full of lessons learned. So, today I’m sharing my best tips for vegetable gardening for beginners. Avoid these 5 beginner mistakes for a glorious garden.

Vegetable Gardening for Beginners | DON’Ts

Let me start this post with the disclaimer that I am not a master gardener. I dabble, I dig, I pull, I cry tears of despair…but I’m not educated on this topic in any credible way. Just trial by fire, my friends. But sometimes the best tips come from those who can tell you what not to do if you are embarking on vegetable gardening for beginners.

With that in mind, let’s chat about the 5 mistakes I implore you to avoid as you plan your gardening adventures.

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1. Don’t Plant Too Early

Here in the great state of Michigan spring is like a pin ball machine. It’s up and down, back and forth, teasing us with an hour of 80 degrees followed by snow the next day. So as you plan your gardening timeline, make sure to check your local weather stats for the average time of the last frost.

It would be a tragedy to plant all your little seedlings with hope and anticipation to have them become popsicles before their time to grow commences.

Luckily for me, last year I only lost one small planting I ambitiously got in the ground before a late snowfall. The other items I started indoors and were safe in my sunroom. However, let’s call this mistake 1A to avoid:

Don’t start crops indoors that have no business being started indoors.

Sarah Symonds…..the wannabe gardener

I happened to think I would be ahead of the game if I started all of my vegetables indoors. Rookie. 😉 Case in point, the below photo. You see, when you start crops like corn, beets and carrots indoors it forces them to form shallow root systems.

As you can imagine, these types of vegetables need to dive deep into that soil in order to remain stable and get the nutrients they need.

So be patient as you prepare to plant. Wait for the weather to be right. And make sure you research what types of vegetables can be started indoors (ex: tomatoes) and what shouldn’t be (ex: corn).

2. Don’t Neglect the Soil

We are lucky to have extremely rich soil in our vegetable garden. It is great for growing {weeds} and didn’t need a lot of soil prep. However, there was a drastic difference between one side of our garden and the other as far as sand composition goes. I’m not sure if the previous owner intentionally kept a space of the garden sandier for a specific food he was growing, or what honestly.

All I know is that the areas that we fertilized went bananas. The areas we didn’t….grew, but much more slowly and not as robustly. Like I said, I am no master gardener. However, I love that there are tools out there now that simplify the scientific process.

If you don’t know what your soil needs, make sure to do a simple at-home test kit to determine the pH levels. This will help you determine what kind of organic matter, fertilizer, or other additive you need to adjust your soil’s pH levels to accommodate your vegetable garden.

3. Don’t Assume You’ll Be Able to Hand Weed

Oh my friends. The moment I assumed I’d be able to hand weed a soccer field sized vegetable garden was the moment I should have started to question my sanity.

Let’s just say, we learned a lot last summer.

Believe it or not, all that green is actually just weeds. HA! The vegetable beds are the areas you see covered in straw in our desperate attempt to save my floundering vegetable garden half-way through the summer.

At one point, my husband just started mowing the weeds rather than try to control them. That was about the time I threw in the towel.

Honestly, I don’t know if we just had mutant weeds or if it is because I refused to use chemicals to control too large an area, but the weeds were relentless.

First mistake, not mulching (or using straw) on the vegetable beds to keep the weeds down amidst the growing crop.

Second mistake, assuming that an open field of beautiful, rich soil wouldn’t grow weeds in the absence of intentionally planted foods.

Third mistake, (there were many more but we’ll leave those for another time)…not laying out my vegetable beds with enough spacing between them to at least be able to rototill the weeds to oblivion.

4. Don’t Ignore the Pests

Insect control is a no-brainer when it comes to gardening. You must control the pests, and I certainly knew that. I picked tomato grubs off, drowned Japanese Beetles in those fancy beetle bags and kept an eye out for aphids.

Side note: If you use beetle bags for Japanese beetles (which work GREAT) then make sure to read the directions! Do NOT place them in your garden. The point of these bags is to draw the beetles away from your precious plants. Stake them away from your growing area or you will just be luring the beetles in to dinner.

I had a pretty good control over my insects, however I didn’t anticipate other pests. We have a good strong fence up to keep deer and rabbits out, but I didn’t count on these guys.

A lovely little family of raccoons ravaged our mulberry trees. While we’d planned for the land dwellers, we didn’t anticipate the branches hanging over our fencing that would allow the climbers to creep in. Lesson learned.

5. Don’t Take On Too Much

My number one lesson for vegetable gardening for beginners: Don’t take on too much. Lucky for me, I had several amazing master gardeners guide me along the way through Instagram where I was sharing my gardening journey last summer.

I’ll never forget the words of the first lovely lady who sent me a message, “You have an amazing space with so much potential! But please don’t plant that whole garden your first year. It will ruin your love for the hobby.”

Guess who didn’t listen? Guess who was right?

In my ignorance I figured that if I had the space I may as well use it! Apparently I forgot in those planning days that I am also a wife, mother, small business owner, one woman show, friend, daughter and human being that can’t sustain 24/7 working hours. 😉

So start small my friends. Vegetable gardens can actually be very fun! I wasn’t completely ruined by the experience but I certainly learned what not to do. However, I don’t want to be all about the negative!

Our first garden taught me a lot. But it was also rewarding. I was able to spend some quality time with my daughter (my son was smart and after the first weeding session committed to working in other areas of the yard, HA!). We also ate all summer long off of our harvest, as small as it sometimes was! So here are some things you should DO.

Vegetable Gardening for Beginners| DOs

DO:

• Plant what you love to eat.
• Make a plan for weed control (I’m trying these raised beds this year).
• Plan your spacing to allow for plants to grow (like pumpkins which need lots of room) and also for you to keep the weeds down in the walkways.
• Plan to garden daily for weed control and harvesting.
• Have the right tools. These are my favorite tried-and-true must-haves:
  • Full Gardening Tool Set: Super affordable for all of these tools
  • Gardening Knife
  • Extra Thick Kneeling Pad
  • Best Gloves: breathable + keep fingers dry
  • Best Hat: for cool UV face coverage
  • Best Hat: for UV face and neck coverage (with a pony tail hole!)
• Be prepared for your harvest! Make a plan for what you will do when you have more tomatoes/asparagus/green beans/lettuce…etc than you could ever eat.

And do plant flowers among your vegetable garden!

1. They are beautiful and will give you joy as you pick your thousandth weed.

2. They help with pollination and bringing those bees in when you want them!

Year 2 | Vegetable Garden Plan

I’m actually really looking forward to my second year of vegetable gardening. I’m certainly still a beginner but I have high hopes for some of the changes we’re making. Here’s the plan for this year.

• Raised Beds with mulch
• Landscape fabric + mulch on the unplanted ground to allow for clean walkways
• Only planting 4 beds with vegetables to harvest
• Using our gigantic space for more fruit trees and blueberry bushes instead of yearly plantings
• Mulch, mulch and more mulch. May as well buy stock in it now folks. 😉