This spring, I was determined. This time, my plants would thrive.
To turn my black thumb into a green thumb, I decided to dedicate time to do some basic research on successful vegetable gardening- rather than my prior technique of plopping some dirt and a tomato seedling into a pot and hoping for the best.
Which clearly was not working for me.
I read at least ten fantastic books on vegetable gardening, they ranged from beginner to advanced techniques. I binge watched far too much gardening YouTube and listened to gardening podcasts at every opportunity.
Did you know that you can listen to podcasts doing just about any chore: cleaning, cooking, painting, walking the dog, kissing your significant other… 😀
The final key was finding other gardeners in a similar gardening zone to me via social media and learning what works and doesn’t work in our specific microclimate.
For example, when I learned after the fact, that planting tomatoes and peppers before June 1st can leave them venerable to a sudden frost in our fickle Colorado spring weather.
There goes $100 in seedlings…
In short, I packed my brain with so much gardening knowledge that some of it actually stuck and my plants did not just survive last year, but lived long enough to produce enough edible vegetables for my family and my neighbors!
You Can Grow A Garden Too!
If you are ready to take the plunge into the veggie gardening space this year, I created a list of my favorite books and other resources that I used to create the veggie garden of my dreams.
If you are like me and need a little gardening inspiration to survive the depths of winter, scroll below to a list of my favorite gardening fiction to curl up with on the couch and dream of warm weather.