As you find yourself understanding the essential steps in a Nevada class action lawsuit, you’ll likely find yourself stressed and nervous. You need a relaxing distraction that you can escape to when it all gets to be too much. Luckily, such a thing exists and has a lot of benefits: gardening!
Whether you decide to plant vegetables and fruits to enjoy later or you just want to see your favorite plants flourish, you can’t go wrong with gardening. It can even be done inside. However, rushing into it too quickly will cost you a lot of time, money, and patience. Read on for some advice on how to make even your Nevada garden thrive.
Test Your Soil
Everyone’s soil is different, and it’s a massive factor you have to consider when planning a garden. This is why it’s so important to test your soil. For example, soil made up of a lot of clay will hold water for an incredibly long time, so plants that can’t handle that will get root rot or simply drown.
Sandy soil dries quickly, though, and is more acidic than many other soils. This will dry out or straight-up kill some plants. A soil test will tell you not only what type of soil you have and how acidic it is but also how much nutrients it currently has.
Once you have this information, you can determine what you need to do to balance your soil and prepare it for plants. You can also use this information to determine what plants may not be an option for you because of how difficult they’d be to care for and what weeds and pests you’ll be fighting. Before you get too excited about picking plants and yard decorations, test your soil and prepare it for your ambitions based on your results.
Understand Your Climate
There are climate maps online that can tell you a lot about your average temperatures, rainfall numbers, snowfall chance and depth, and more. These can all be pretty useful in deciding what to plant when, but they aren’t enough. You’ll have to do some extra research and observe for yourself what temperatures are like when, how often it rains, how much sun you get, etc.
Once you have this information, you can start seeing what months are what season and start preparing what you’ll plant when based on that information. If you’re still struggling after all of this research then reach out to your local community garden, botanical garden, or gardening group for more information and tips.
Learn Proper Watering
There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to properly watering your garden. Everything from the weather to the soil to even how big the plant is will determine how much water it will require. Also, you need to know how to water. Pouring water from a can or hose onto the top of the plant might hydrate it, but it wouldn’t be enough.
You need to water your garden deeply, near the ground to ensure the roots grow deep and healthy. If you’re confused about what this means for you, look into how drip irrigation works, as this is the type of watering recommended for large gardens.
Consider Sunlight
Every plant needs a different amount of sunlight, so the only way to determine the best place to plant it is to observe how much sunlight your yard gets. Do this for many days over the course of many seasons so you can get a clear picture that includes various weather conditions and leaf growth.
Once you know how much light each area gets, you can research the plants you’d like to plant to see where they’d be happiest. Most plants will enjoy the spots that get sun all day but may struggle in deep or dappled shade. These areas require plants that enjoy less direct sun.
As you research, the terms “full sun, part sun or part shade and full shade” will come up. Full sun refers to those areas that get sunlight all day. Part shade and part sun mean the same thing most of the time and do well in the dappled shade created by overhanging tree branches.
Full shade refers to areas that are almost always in shadow, like those against the north side of your home. Mark these areas of your yard differently from each other and keep them in mind as you plan your dream garden.
Pick Native Plants
Make sure to include plenty of native plants in your garden. They require little to no care since they’re adapted to your environment, attract bugs that feed birds, encourage native pollinators like butterflies and bees, which increases the health of your entire garden, and so much more.
While it may seem boring to plant the plants that you’ve already seen, the environment will thank you for it and turn your backyard into a mini paradise for all kinds of native species. Just watch out for the spiders; they like the native bugs, too.
Decide Purpose
Once you understand your soil, climate, watering techniques, and such, it’s time to start picking out your plants. You’ll have to decide whether your garden will be a pretty flower garden, a vegetable garden filled with yummy produce, or a mix of both. Keep in mind, though, that even a combination garden will need special care and that you’ll likely end up with one of the other types by the end.
Both types can be incredibly satisfying in their own ways. Vegetable and fruit patches will produce delicious fresh foods that can be washed and eaten as is, prepared in a meal or drink, or preserved for later enjoyment. Once you’ve harvested it fully, you can then plant new seasonal plants and start the cycle over.
Flower gardens or those filled with leafy plants will attract local wildlife like animals and pollinators, which can be really fun. This is especially true if you have special visitors, like timid hares or rabbits or the small but sassy hummingbirds. Of course, both gardens will attract bugs and their predators, too, so bear that in mind before you begin planting.
