DO THIS FIRST FOR GARDEN SUCCESS! | top tips, epic fails, GOING LIVE? and viewer questions answered

The best success you can give yourself is taking some time to think through steps of your garden ahead of putting anything in the ground. I’m excited to share my top tips with you from years of experience and lots of failures along the way.
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Kim, The Southern Daisy
Zone 8a NC

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what’s up everybody happy Monday let’s talk about something it is planting week at my house and I filmed a whole video for you and was sitting here editing it to put out today I am going to give you a little spoiler alert for what’s coming tomorrow I planted the garden I planted I started planting the garden and as I’m going through this I realized because number one the video was 56 minutes long I also number two realized that that’s Barry say hey to Barry he’s eating my plants currently he’s so naughty um I realized that I have two videos in one and I need to rewind and we need to start over Okay first things first today I want to talk about how I plan my garden how I think through taking the plants the seedlings out of my containers how I think through um my hardened off seedlings that are now down in my garden and how I get them in the garden what goes through my brain we won’t talk about everything that goes through my brain because that’s a whole reality Series so what types of things do we want to talk about when we are planting our garden Garden first and foremost is sunlight and sun exposure to the space that you are going to plant whatever it is you have sun-loving plants you have shade loving plants you have some that can tolerate a sunshade mix okay so a lot of the vegetables that I plant are full sun that is something like tomatoes cucumbers squash zucchini uh corn uh just to name a few so I need to know and you need to know when you’re planning your garden what your sunlight is for your space not to be a broken record not to repeat myself but it is first and foremost the most important thing that I can stress to you that you need to know so last week I decided I needed to know my exact Sun levels what am I working with because let me show you in the last 6 months this tree this is a beautiful willow oak that is right off of my deck has gotten so much bigger and as you can see it is 10:15 in the morning and my garden that used to be full sun all the time is now showing part sun so as I told you full sun there are plants that love full sun and a lot of those vegetables need to be in the full sun tomatoes especially corn especially what I decided to do last week is to come out I set an alarm on my phone and I set it for every hour and I started I want to say I started either at 10:30 or 11:30 and I timed every hour and I took a video of what my garden looked like at the time and so I want to show you that now and I’m I want to highly recommend that you do this as well video it set your timer on your phone because trust me you do get busy now it is 10:00 a.m. and as you can see there is dappled light over in this section over near the greenhouse is more full shade obviously on the other side stays full shade and the back two beds are full sun it’s 11:30 so now we have sun in the back two beds on the right side a little bit more shade on the left left side you can see the outline of the tree it’s 12:30 an hour later and as you can see we have shade covering this section and a little bit where the jugs are the back two were back open and then this whole side is now in the full sun it is right at 2:00 and the entire Garden is now full sun well with the exception of this little corner here here we are at 2:30 and the entire Garden is for the most part in the sun all right here we are at 4:30 and as you can see the entire Garden is still in the Sun and here is our final time it is 5:30 a little bit after 5:30 and now this one corner is the only thing that’s in the sun something I also want to add when you are doing this make sure that you have a gorgeous Carolina Blue Sky Go Hills and that you are able to devote the time needed to go through a full day next up let’s talk about making sure that our soil is as it should be so I know a lot of people say they don’t till and they do the no till method um some people choose to use top soil and amendments and all the things I do till my garden I don’t add amendments to my soil um I have just worked at it and worked at it and uh so it can be done you you do what works best for you okay but this was a weedy mess we pulled all the weeds and got it prepared so I just turned over the soil and made sure that it about a foot deep it’s nice and workable so that the roots can go down and we can have great success so that’s really how I prepare my soil next what I do is I make sure that my seedlings are hardened off so I go through a whole process of putting them outside getting them acclimated to the outdoors as far as my winter sewing containers I open them up and then I leave them open and let them get used to the direct sunlight I do close them at night the first night and then after that I leave them over um honestly I don’t even know that you have to do that so my seedlings have been hardened off my containers have been opened for about I don’t know a week maybe 5 days my seedlings have been hardened off for about 10 days so I’ve gone through the whole process as you can see we moved them down here and they are ready to go so the next thing that I do in planting my garden I have a diagram of my garden where I drew it out and as you’ll see in the video tomorrow I sat out and started to plan and I just thought you know what I do my best work in my garden where I don’t plan everything I just find my creativity is able to soar when I can be a little more creative if you’re not like that that’s okay you can put a pen to paper a pencil to paper sketch out your garden sketch out your bed sketch out whatever it is you are trying to do and you can plan I understand some of us are planners some of us are not and that’s okay there’s no right or wrong answer there you do what works best for you and your personality okay we’re all going to be free to be ourselves next I come out and I so so yesterday I didn’t film this this is kind of a behind the scenes uh scoop and what I did is I kind of walked around with my knowledge of how the sunlight is I thought through how I wanted to lay out my garden so let me explain how my garden is going to work this year so that you can kind of see how my brain starts to process laying out my plants plant ing them and having a very successful season okay so I decide on a theme every single year this year last year and this year I am doing a Cottage Garden that means it’s more Whimsical it’s free flowing no real straight lines some cottage gardens can be planned I’m not saying that’s you know in having a cottage Cottage Garden it has to be unplanned for me it has to be unplanned plan I could not say okay this goes here this goes here however however what I do is I do go back and I draw on my diagram of my garden what I put where so yesterday the plants that I did plant I’m not going to tell you what those are you have to watch tomorrow and see I did come back and I did draw out on my diagram what it is that I planted so that I can keep up with the certain varieties of what it was we have talked about sunlight we have talked about our soil making sure that we have the proper amendments if that’s what we’re going to use making sure we have prepared the soil properly it’s easier to get this done ahead of time and have your planting day be a day to just go out and plant okay you want to think about how you’re going to plan are you going to draw it out are you going to do like my method and not plan but go back and write it down or Draw It out just make sure you have a good way to keep up with your records if that matters to you which it probably will next we want to talk about whether we want to direct seed we want to plant our seedlings or do we want to start a seed tray outside because maybe we didn’t remember to plant something okay so as I walked around I’m going to show you the behind the scenes of what what I did yesterday so I’m going to flip the camera around and I’m just going to talk through it okay and let me say this to you this is this is for my garden But Me Maybe showing you the example of how I think maybe listening to how I think through it will help you I feel like I would be interested in somebody showing me how to do that so I’m going to do the same for you okay I’ve got it zoomed way way way out all right I am all about focal points okay I want to have lots of views I am big on being able to sit back on my porch and look at this garden and see beauty I don’t necessarily want to see a squash plant or a tomato plant or corn but I know that they are going to be in this Garden because this is a Cottage Garden it’s going to have vegetables fruit herbs flowers roses so we are making sure that we are incorporating all those things however I know I don’t want to see a big corn plant right as I’m looking at my fence right I know I’m going to see it because it’s going to be taller than anything out there so I’m thinking about the views what I want to see if I care about this you may not care I do so this is the view from my driveway as I stand right here so you’re going to see a lot of this side you see a lot of this side right okay so I am automatically thinking what do I want to greet me as I open the gate to my garden I know that normally I put zenas here my very first year I planted flowers here and just in this section and I found as I went back through everything the only pictures I took that particular year were like this because this was the beauty over here was the vegetables and the herbs and to me those are beautiful in their own space but they’re not they’re not what set my soul on fire when I come out and look and then move to tears it’s the flowers it’s the beauty of it okay so as I walk into my garden I know that from last year I had zenas here I also know that these I direct sew these aren’t started from seed already over here this is an herb bed and I know that I want to add flowers to this bed so automatically I have thought I want do I want it to be matchy matchy meaning zenia’s here zenas is here no I’m going to add a few zenas in here but it’s not going to be a full bed I have other things in here I have lemon balm and some fever feew daisies and then I will add in a couple of things but I want it to be very pretty this is Shady a lot longer than this is is as I am looking I’m thinking okay my vegetables need to go on the back here and here because as I said in the beginning of this video vegetables need more sun in order to get the fruit the vegetables that I want I know that I know my tomatoes and my corn my squash and my zucchini my cucumbers my watermelon my cantaloupe all need to fit somewhere in this back bed I am thinking about height as well so I’m thinking sunlight I’m thinking height what do I have that is super tall my very first time winter sewing I grew this plant that I fell head over heels in love with called Tonia or Mexican sunflower if you followed me for any amount of time you know I talk about it all the time all the time I have a video just dedicated to the Mexican sunflower the funniest thing was I planted it right here I thought it was a dwarf plant it gets for me 15ish feet tall okay so I was like oh wow look at this plant and oh look at me I have taken a dwarf plant and look it is skyrocketing no no no it was always that size and I just didn’t read the package so note to you guys too read the back of the package read the seed pack do research on your plants that you’re planting to make sure you know how tall they’re going to get because the last thing you want to do is put a very tall plant in the front in right here unless you are trying to create privacy and you’re doing it on purpose if you want to be able to see beyond it don’t do like I did okay so that is our next lesson we want to think about our height requirements every plant has a height that it typically will get to and width so you need to think about spacing I am really bad about spacing I tend to plant this Garden a lot closer than it says on the seed pack um because I want everything close together I don’t want to see where one plant ends and the next one begins I want it to all just flow and be beautiful and be like plus to me it keeps the weeds out that’s less weeding that I would have to do what I want to talk about now is starting seeds Okay so I have used many different methods in planting my garden I have the winter sewing method love it I started seeds indoors using seed trays and grow lights love it I have hardened both of those off and can use any of those I am going to also use a method you’ll see in a video tomorrow direct sewing but what I want to talk about is your seed options just because you have started planting just because the weather is warm you are past your last frost date does not mean in any way shape or form you can’t still start seeds what you can do is take one of these that is not full of plants and not dripping with water this is a cell tray that I use to start seeds on the inside what you can do even though it’s beautiful outside the weather is warm it’s even better actually um you can start seeds in cell trays outside okay you may be saying well why would I do that why wouldn’t I just plant them in the ground well because birds birds are a real issue they it’s like they have r rars when you plant a seed in the ground and they’re like oh there it is thank you for planting the buffet of whatever my sunflowers last year I planted 200 sunflower seeds I got two sunflowers two I did cover them with this humidity Dome once they germinated which I think really took like 2 days took that off it’s like I had grown them in the ground but in in a protected area where the birds couldn’t come up and and Peck them I mean I guess technically they could but once they have sprouted they’re not interested in them anymore okay so it literally took me maybe two weeks to get my seedlings big enough my sunflowers from seed to seedling to plant it out in maybe 2 weeks so that is another option in starting seeds so what I would typically do in an ideal Ideal World I would categorize my plants by height and by the sun requirements only thing that I don’t have is the height requirements so I’m going to have to spend a little bit of time really thinking through especially when I get to my flowers and especially the ones that I have just planted for the first time this year the last thing I want to touch on is I have gotten a lot of questions from you guys asking about when when do you plant your plants out if they look like this or they look like this or this and you know that is honestly or like this okay typically I would not plant this out I am going to allow it to get a little bit bigger and maybe plant it out later um what we may do is an experiment just to see this is blackeyed Susan Gold elocks and so we may we may take these out actually that’s what we’re going to do we’re going to try an experiment these I would not plant I’m going to let them get bigger so I may take the ones that look like this or this or this and give them a chance to get a little bit bigger so hopefully this video was not too scattered and I was able to rewind and take it back and explain a little bit more about the things that I talk about in my video that you’re going to see tomorrow I it’s so important for me that you guys understand and that you are equipped with the opportunity to have planning and planting and to know what to do you’ve taken so much time and I’m so proud of you for taking the step I know some of you are are brand new gardeners and I know how scary it is to start something new and not have all the details and I’m proud of you I’m proud of you for trying let’s just keep going keep watching the videos ask the questions and I will do my best to help you I’m going to do a live where I think it would be fun never done one before but I was thinking I was going to do a live YouTube video I don’t know what happens there it may be 2 minutes it may be six hours who knows um but I was thinking about having my daughter here with me to kind of help me through navigating it and see if we could maybe answer some of your questions live or not her you don’t want her to answer any questions that you have unless it’s about medical stuff um she is a pediatric nurse she was a LifeLight nurse she is pretty impressive um but we have so much fun together so she has no clue about plants that could be very fun actually so I think we’re we may do that this week or next week whenever she’s off so anyway I want to thank you so much for watching this video and please ask me questions you’re going to see this the day I’m filming it so today is Monday you’re going to see this one Monday well for those of you that see it when it comes out you may catch it some other time um but anyway feel free to ask me any questions uh and let me know if there’s any videos that you need that will help you to be successful and I look forward to seeing you in another video soon all right go out get your hands dirty and have the best day ever take care bye