Gardening

• Enlarge

Category: Planting

Start thinking now about spring gardening

So if after reading all the gardening blogs, gardening fever has struck and you plan to make a garden next year, here are some tips to get you started. Some of these will come in handy for us "old" gardeners, too:

Make sure you compost: Not only does it help the environment, it's free fertilizer. I have a compost bin but you can start by just making a compost pile.

Don't start too early: It's so hard not to get out there and start gardening the first sign of spring. Of course you can plant early spring crops like peas, but to plant tomatoes or other plants that are not hardy, our date for vegetable gardening here is Memorial Day. Of course, that doesn't mean we haven't made this mistake a few times and lost a few plants.

Buy seeds on sale: If you're new to gardening of course you don't have any seeds saved. Now is a great time to find them in the clearance section and they will be good next year.

Used gardening tools: Look for garage sales or on craigslist this spring to buy your gardening tools: Hoes, shovels, rakes, pots and even rototillers can be found for cheap at the early spring sales. While you're at it, look for gardening books you can read and soak up some more knowledge.

Canning: If you're going to can next year, consider buying your canning equipment used, too. A lot of people are getting out of gardening about the same time you are deciding to get in to it. Good thing I bought extra canning jars this year - I ended up using many of them.

Pot gardening: If you don't have lots of room for a garden consider growing in pots on your deck or plant a few tomato plants in with the marigolds.

Seedlings: If you think you might start seedlings indoors start saving your egg cartons and plastic cups, such as yogurt cups and cottage cheese containers. They make great seed starter pots.

Share: Become friends with other gardeners who love to share plants and seeds from their garden and will give you some much needed advice. My neighbor, Wilma, really helped me when I first got started.

I hope these tips will help you garden next year - and inexpensively.

You can catch up with my garden at Gardening in Lower MI.