It’s May!! I love the month of May, not just because I was born in May because you get to feel the change in the weather and our nature. The flowers and vegetables are in bloom. It’s just beautiful, don’t you think so? And May has always been the start of my gardening season. Not that I’m a serious gardener. I’m using gardening as a form of therapy and stress release.

A couple of weeks ago, I took our Insta TV audience to my garden and told them what I’m planning to plant. Interestingly I got a few private messages from fans that they want to start gardening and don’t know where to begin from—asking me what is the easiest to plant for beginners.

I’m no gardener, but I thought to share my experience and expand on gardening for beginners.

So if you’ve been gardening for a while, this blog post is not for you. It has nothing to offer except my personal stories and opinions 😀

But if you are new to gardening and want to spend the minimum of the time doing so, just looking to plant some practical crops for your use and a few flowers to make your space come alive, keep on reading.

Prepping your garden

As I said, I’m not a gardener. I garden to meditate; weeding is a form of stress relief for me. And it can give you the pleasure of achievement immediately as you can see the result right away. Caution: when you start weeding, make sure to decide on the space you are working on to get that satisfaction as weeds are all around, and sometime you can’t get to all if you have a large piece of land to weed.

As you guessed it, your garden or planter may have a lot of weeds to pick. The first thing you want to do is to clear the area you like to plant. The less weed your garden bed has, the better. Having said that, if you are new to your area or gardening, you need to know your weeds. Don’t pull anything that is growing a lot in your garden.

Here is a funny story about that.

When I moved to Canada and had my own garden for the first time. Obviously, I decided to garden. I was familiar with weeding since I was a kid in Iran. My mom loved gardening, and plated are sorts of things in our backyard garden. One of my spring and summertime chores was to help her with weeding. So the first thing I did started pulling weeds in my garden. Soon I realized that I’m dealing with different kinds of weeds.

I knew some plants enough not to mistake them with weeds. But there were some that I wasn’t familiar with and there were a lot of them. So I started pulling them one by one. Luckily the previous owner of the house we just bought came for a visit. She saw me pulling these plants and immediately screamed “Oh NO do you know what are you pulling?” turned out I was pulling her strawberry bushes one by one thinking they were weeds 🙂

So know the weeds in your area before starting pulling something especially if you are working on a previously owned garden.

Here are few weeds safe to pull:

• Dandelions:  You can use the young leaves in salads, but they are considered weeds as they can take over your garden soon if not contained.

• Crabgrass: No use for these, and if not pulled when young, the root can go way down the dirt and pulling can be difficult, get to them as fast as you can.

• Bindweed: These are like snakes. They are vining plants that can take over your garden and kind of chock your plants and flowers. Be careful to pick then when they are young and just came out; when grown, they can be tangling your plants. Pulling time when tangled your plant can damage your plant, make sure to cut the tangled part and then remove the rest safely to avoid damaging your plant.

• Cinquefoil: These are the most persistent weed I ever encountered. The definition says they are found in neglected lawns. No, they are wrong; these are everywhere, and it doesn’t matter how you care for your garden. They come back, and you need to pick them. The spread with creeping stem, and I find that if I get to them when they are young, or they stem just rooted, I can pull them easier. They’ve got beautiful yellow followers, though, but I don’t suggest you wait until they bloom.
• Moss: And finally, moss. Picking moss may be the simplest thing ever, but you will lose a layer of your soil doing so. It’s best to remove the moss as much as possible as it will mess up with the moisture of your land, and therefore your plants won’t have the right amount of moisture they need. Too much or too little water both are damaging to your plants.

So here is the first step. Part One. Prep your area for planting. Now, if you are just starting in planters. All you need to do is to get some well-draining planters. Before shopping for planters, decide on how much time do you want to spend watering your plants. If you are a person who likes to spend a few minutes every day watering the plant, get the ones that drain right away, the best kind for your plants. If you are not willing to water every day and prefer to do that once or twice a week, get the self-watering kind. The ones that hold on water and don’t drain right away.

We will expand on picking your plants to plant next week.