Flower Gardening For Beginners – the Secrets No One Tells You

👉️ Flower Gardening 101 (Full Article): https://www.prettypurpledoor.com/flower-gardening-for-beginners/

👉️Plant Perfect Activity Book: https://prettypurpledoor.com/plantperfect

👉️Watering Calculator: https://www.prettypurpledoor.com/garden-watering-calculator/

👉️Gardening Zone by Zip Code: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

👉️Frost Date Calculator: https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates

👉️Espoma Fertilizers: https://amzn.to/3NONWiZ

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👉️About This Video
When I was a beginner gardener, I didn’t know what to plant, how to plant it, where to plant it… nothing. Over time, I learned a lot… It just took me SO MUCH TIME. So, I put together this beginner’s guide to flower gardening to give you the answers to the questions that you don’t even know you need to ask, yet.

These are the flowering gardening beginner tips
1. Where you live matters… a lot; know your gardening zone
2. There are different classifications for plants; perennials, annuals (and biennials too)
3. You can’t grow plants without sun… and they all need different amounts.
4. Pick plants based on your soil contents… don’t modify your soil to suit your plants.
5. Simple math will help you to space your plants properly.
6. You need to water, feed and shelter your plants (just like babies).
7. How to plant your first plant into the ground: planting basics
8. Planting is not permanent; so don’t stress

So, what is your favorite gardening tip? You know… that thing you wish you knew before you got started gardening? Leave your tips in the comments below!

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So in this video I’m going to give you a complete crash course in flower gardening 101 and I know that some of you are already familiar with the basics of gardening and you may be inclined to skip this video but I encourage you not to because a lot of the things that are

On this list are things that I thought I knew but I didn’t really know and it caused me a lot of heartache and pain in my garden in the first one or two years before I kind of figured these things out so whether you’re brand new to gardening or you’ve been gardening for

Quite some time I think there are things on this list that will resonate with you and you’re definitely going to learn something so let’s get right into it so the first thing to know about flower gardening is that you have to put the right plant in the right place and that

Sounds really simple but that’s really all it is so in this video I’m going to go over a lot of the things that would be the criteria that you would use to determine whether you have the right plant for that right place and the first one I want to talk about is your

Gardening zone so a lot of people in Facebook groups and online will ask you immediately what’s your Zone what’s your guarding zones so your USDA hardiness zone is very simple you just Google gardening zone by ZIP code and you can put in your zip code and it’ll give you

A number and a letter after it so my zone here in northeast Pennsylvania is Zone 6B and what this tells you is the plants that you could plant in your garden and that it will survive the coldest temperatures that it gets in the winter that’s literally it’s just a

Determination of how cold your garden gets so every number from six to seven is a 10 degree difference Fahrenheit in how cold it gets on average in the winter and every a versus B every half step is a five degree difference so just the very Baseline you have to know your

Gardening zone in order to determine if the plant that you want to plant will survive the winter in your area in my opinion gardening zones really don’t matter all that much the reason that you do need to know your zone is if you’re looking for information online so if

You’re asking in a Facebook Garden group or or if you’re looking at blog posts online with different plants listed or if you plan to buy any of your plants online you’ll need to know your zone so that you can filter down the results that you’re getting and make sure that

They’re able to plant in your particular space other than that you don’t really need to know that if you’re going to be shopping locally the plants that will be at the Garden Center where you are locally will definitely be suitable for your Zone and it doesn’t necessarily

Just because a plant fits into that particular Zone that you’re in doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to survive in your garden so there’s a lot of other considerations that we’re going to cover in this video that would make it clear as far as is this the right plant for

The right place the next thing to consider when planning your first flower garden is whether you’re going to use perennial flowers or annual flowers and this gets a little confusing because you would think annual flowers would come back every year but annuals need to be planted every year perennials will

You’ll plant them once and they come back in your garden every single year so the differences between the two typically perennials that come back every single year while they’re beautiful and less maintenance they typically don’t Bloom as long as an annual plant well so perennials will

Bloom for maybe four to nine ten weeks in your garden and then they’ll stop blooming and they’ll just be green and their life cycle will kind of continue the next year and they’ll Bloom at the same time next year annuals on the other hand in general will Bloom for quite a

Bit of time so if you’re choosing like a zinnias or Cosmos or impatience or things like that they will provide year-long color in your garden until it gets too cold in your area for the frost if that’s the case then they’ll die out and they don’t come back they complete

Their life cycle in one year so a lot of times something that is a perennial plant will be considered annual in your Zone and that’s just because so in the south in Florida this plant that is considered an annual for you may be a perennial and it may come back every

Year in the South or in Cal horny or something like that but because the temperatures are so cold where you live it will just die so there’s that kind of annual that literally is a perennial but it just won’t come back because it’s too cold where you live so we consider them

Annuals in like colder climates and then there’s other plants that are true annuals and they complete their life cycle in one year and some of those annuals will at the end of the year when they’re done flowering they’ll drop seed in your garden into the soil and

Potentially will grow back the next year through those seeds so they complete their entire life cycle in that one year the next thing that you need to consider when you’re planting your first flower garden is the sun requirements of the particular plant so typically you’ll see

Full sun part sun part shade and full shade for their requirements and I like to just narrow it down to full sun part sun or shade and just have those three categories so full sun will need six hours of sunlight per day for that plant to survive part sun or part shade would

Be anywhere from three hours to to six hours of sunlight per day and full shade would be three hours or less of sun per day so that’s just sort of how I categorize it and it’s just important to know that even if the area is a full sun

Area like it’s a south facing property you may have other things on your property or in your neighbor’s properties that may be restricting sun in some areas so you could have a lot of areas of your garden that are full sun and other ones that are in shade because

They’re blocked by a tree by a fence by structure by a building areas and side yards are typically Shady because they’re shaded by the house next to you so the best thing to do is create a sun map for this and then just watch the sun throughout the day and every couple

Hours record if the sun is actually on that spot or if you’re seeing shade at that time and then determine if that particular area that you’re planting gets over six hours or it gets somewhere from three to six or if it gets less than three the next thing that you’ll

Want to consider when planning your first flower garden is what type of soil that you have so there are a lot of different ways to do this there are home test kits there are ways to send out soil samples to your master gardener extension can help you with that or you

Can just do simple testing at home in my plant perfect activity book I have a couple different exercises you can go through one is using a mason jar to test your soil and determine the different types of materials that are in your soil and about how much to get the type of

Soil I also have a perk test in there that will help you determine how well your soil drains so you may want to check out my plant perfect activity book that’s just one small part of that book and there’s a lot of other things in there that will help you especially if

You’re new to gardening and starting with a blank slate and planning your space but in general you can either test your soil or a really simple thing that you can do is just dig a hole and kind of grab the soil and try to ball it up

If it’s in a ball and it stays sticky and it’s like a sticky ball that probably means that you have more clay like material in your soil and that means that the drainage isn’t going to be as good and if it feels Sandy and the ball is like not sticking and it’s

Breaking apart you likely have more sand in your soil which means the water is going to drain really well there’s not one that’s better than the other in my opinion there’s a lot of plants that will grow in sandy soil there’s a lot of plants that will grow in clay soil so

It’s really just a matter of determining which type you have and then that will help you choose the right plant for the right place a lot of plants don’t like wet feet so they’re not going to be great in clay soil where the water May

Sit and some plants need a lot of water so they’re not going to be happy in a sandier soil where they’re they’re drying out in between rainfalls or watering or things like that so it’s just something to keep in mind it’s a good thing to know what type of soil

That you have so after you determine those few things about your property the soil the zone that you’re in whether you’re going to use perennials or annuals or a mix of both and how much sun that you’re getting you’re going to be ready to choose your plants so now

You have a really good basis to use to actually choose the plants and I like to just go online even if I’m not going to purchase the plants online the online websites like nature Hills Nursery or fast growing trees or things like that usually have a lot of filtering features

Where you can filter by Sun requirements you can filter by your Zone you can filter by the type of soil that you have and things like that and you can get a really targeted narrowed down list of plants that are actually going to work for your space so that’s definitely what

I would recommend and once you have those plants chosen there’s a couple things that you need to do to keep those plants alive so the main thing to remember is that once you plant a plant it can’t really move out of that space plants don’t have feet so as a gardener

It’s your responsibility to make sure that you’re putting it in the right place and then giving it what it needs to survive so the first thing is water plants need water to survive especially when you’re first planting that plant you’re going to have to water pretty regularly if it’s a perennial or

Something like that you’re going to need to water every day or every few days until that gets established that can usually take a month or two and if it’s a larger shrub or tree you may need to water consistently for an entire year so the next thing that I would recommend is

That you buy a simple rain gauge and these are really cheap you can get them online you can get them at the Garden store and basically it’s just a cup and it has measurements on it so you stick it out in your garden and when you get actually natural rainfall in your area

It’ll tell you about how much and every week you just dump that out so in general plants need about one inch of water per week to survive so if it’s rained at least an inch of water in your particular area that means that you’re

Good to go and you don’t need to do any supplemental watering for your plants and if it’s less than one inch of water then you’re going to need to supplement with that water and you may wonder how much is one inch of water so in a one

Foot by one foot space it’s about .6 gallons of water would equal one inch and I’ll put a calculator in the description below that will help you determine you just basically take the width and the length of your garden bed in inches and then you can calculate

About how much water is going to be needed for that particular area and a good way to do this like a simpler way to do this you just have to do it once and then you’re good to go is I like to take that measurement so say it’s five

Gallons of water for the space that you have I would take a five gallon bucket and I would just water into that bucket using whatever whatever you’re going to be using to water your garden bed so if you have a hose put the hose on shower and spray it into that five gallon

Bucket and time yourself so that way you know okay it takes me 20 minutes to fill this five gallon bucket so I’m going to water my garden for 20 minutes that’s probably excessive it’s probably not going to take you that long to fill a five gallon bucket but just as an

Example and that calculator will be in the description below so proper watering so that they can get established is really important okay so they need water they need food and they need shelter so the next thing is food and that’s fertilizer typically I will fertilize new plants using espoma biotone and I’ll

Put a link to the fertilizers all the Espana products I like they’re all very good so I I use that every time I plant a new plant and typically from year to year I will fertilize maybe twice with my perennials in the spring and then again like later in the fall or when

They start blooming and I’ll use a plant tone or some kind of espoma product for that as well if you’re planting annuals or anything that really blooms heavily and has a lot of blooms that’s using a lot of energy for the plant so you’re going to need to supplement that with

Food and feeding them and especially in containers where they’re in a contained space and the nutrients in the soil are what they are you may need to continue to add nutrients to the soil as you go so just keeping up with feeding that plant making sure that it has the proper

Amount of water and the proper amount of food and then the next thing that we’ll talk about is Sheltering the plants so this is kind of dependent on your Zone as well so if you are in a zone six and you’re growing a plant that can grow

From zones six to nine that means you’re kind of on the edge of that growing zone so there is the potential for it to get a little bit too cold for that particular or plant so in those situations where you’re kind of on the edge or the border of the zone you may

Need to take more care when deciding where to plant that plant whether it’s like Sheltering it from the wind or from any of the harsh weather by tucking it into a corner or protecting it with like the side of the property or putting it in between something that’s going to

Protect it and keep it away from the harsh environment and there’s also other things that can happen like heavy rain storms or just extreme heat or drought situations and your plants are going to potentially respond to that in a negative way so just keep an eye on all

Your plants make sure that they have the shelter and the protection that they need from any of the harsh elements that are out there okay so the next consideration that you need to make is actually spacing out your plants properly and a lot of new gardeners get

This wrong because you buy this teeny tiny little perennial plant in the garden center and you plant them a little bit too close or too close to the property line too close to the house too close together things like that or really too far apart art so always know

The full size of the plant that you’re planting and make sure that you’re planting accordingly if you’re planting trees or shrubs I recommend following whatever the criteria is on the package I’m going to have a video All About plant spacing that you can watch on my

Channel too but in general if the plant is going to get five feet wide you need to plant from trunk to trunk if you have two of them at least five feet apart sometimes six if you don’t want them to touch with smaller perennials you have a

Little bit more leeway as far as that goes because you can plant them if it’s a two foot wide perennial you can plant them anywhere from two foot you could even go kind of to 18 inches to make them fill out a little more just know

That when you do that they’ll look nicer right from the beginning so you’ll have that great impact in the beginning but as they grow you may need to divide them split them and spread them out throughout your property so it creates a little bit more maintenance in that

Respect because every couple years you may need to be splitting them but at the same time it kind of reduces maintenance in another way way because if they’re closely planted together there’s not a lot of ground space that’s open and that’s where the weeds come from anywhere there’s bare ground you’re

Going to have weed pressure so planting a bit more tightly in the beginning with smaller plants is a great idea and for those larger ones just make sure that you’re giving them enough space and also make sure you’re not planting too close to your house in general if you’re doing

A foundation planting or something and you have a five foot by five foot shrub an inclination would be to plant it two and a half feet from the house but I’d add another foot or two out so that you could actually get behind that plant to do any kind of Maintenance or especially

If there’s a spigot or any kind of like meters that need to be read just be really cognizant of that and also be cognizant of where the windows and things are on your house so you’re not planting something that’s too large and it’s going to cover a window or block a

Walkway or something like that okay so you’ve picked your plants and you have the spacing figured out hopefully you drew a little plan on a piece of craft paper with just little circles just to give yourself an idea and now you’re ready to plant planting is really simple

It shouldn’t be stressful the only thing that I would recommend is making sure that you’re following when your last frost date of the spring is so I’ll put a link in the description below for a frost date calculator this is by Farmer’s Almanac and it’ll just tell you

That okay it’s safe to plant now in your area there’s likely not going to be any more Frost because your new plants will not be able to tolerate that Frost and annuals definitely won’t be able to tolerate that Frost so if your frost date for example is May 1st in the year

I’d actually recommend waiting another week or two or at least checking the weather for the next few days or up to two weeks if you can and make sure that there’s no time in that period where it’s getting below freezing in your Zone and that will give your plants the best

Chance to survive in that situation and once you’re ready to plant I recommend planting digging the hole and making sure that you’re kind of measuring how high it is in the actual container where you you purchased it and that’s about as deep as you’re going to go with your

Haul but about twice as wide so make sure you’re planting at the same depth that it is inside of its container and then make it a little bit wider and add a little bit of compost or some of that biotone by espoma and mix that in with

The native soil that you have water it in really good and make sure you pack around it and then cover with mulch but make sure the mulch doesn’t touch the actual plant just put it around and that’ll hold in some of the moisture and keep the roots a little bit cooler while

It establishes a lot of people say with new plantings the first year they sleep the second year they creep and the third year they leap so it’s typically a three year period for a lot of especially larger shrubs and things like that to get established because the first year

It may look like they’re sleeping but they’re actually building up that really good root system before they start growing foliage and starting to flower so the second year you might see more growth on the foliage in the third year it might flower there’s definitely only exceptions to this rule I’ve actually

Designed and planted Gardens and within by the end of that season they look great and they fill in over the next few years so I would take that with a grain of salt I hear a lot of people say it and I really don’t believe that you need

To wait three years to have an established looking Garden but at the same time it is good to know that at first they’re going to be putting in down those roots before they start growing above the soil so your job really is just to keep an eye on that

Plant make sure it has the water the food the shelter that it needs and be a patient Gardener so if there’s anything I learned about gardening is that it’ll teach you the art of patience so while you’re waiting for those plants to grow you can check out some of my other

Videos I’ll put another one over here I have tons of garden design tips and tricks on this channel and I will see over the next video and you can keep learning while you’re waiting for those plants to get established Thank you foreign