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Comment by 35fbe7d3d5b9 | Hacker News Reader

Gardening is a fun hobby my wife & I have taken up over the past several years. You probably will never grow an entire meal, and that's fine. You'll still feel satisfaction in going outside with a bowl and coming inside with what will become a salad or a side.

Pick something easy – when I started with zero knowledge I tried some of the harder plants like asparagus and celery and managed to get nothing, but I stuck with it after I realized I couldn't kill my Swiss chard or lettuce or collards if I tried. And don't start off trying to grow from seed. Get starts from a plant store - more expensive, but less likely to die off.

Many of those easier plants are also amenable to growing in a five gallon pot, which is perfect for when you don't have a ton of space to work with, or if you just want to dip your toe in.

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> And don't start off trying to grow from seed

This is great advice if you're just starting out. There's a bit of an art to starting from seed.

You need to understand the dynamics like light, temperature, moisture, and seasonal timing. Where I live, you can start tomatoes indoors around February to have great starts that'll go into a greenhouse in March, or into the soil outside in June. That's quite an undertaking to time and get right. This year I got the timing, lighting, temperature, and all the rest right - the plants look amazing - but I have eighteen extra plants taking up a lot of space that I guess I'll just leave on the sidewalk for a lucky gardener in my neighbourhood. I could have used that space in the nursery for so many other useful things, but I had no idea what would survive or if some would be too small or whatever.

Each plant demands its own special conditions, and it takes a lot of space if you start indoors. Unexpected harsh conditions can suddenly ruin outdoor plants. Forgetting to water one day could more or less stunt an entire bed of seedlings. They can be so delicate, and it can really suck the fun out of gardening.

There's no harm in starting out in easy-mode.

Just a counter suggestion.

I find seeds so cheap to buy, that I just buy a bunch of different packets (for a season), put em in a bowl, then just throw them everywhere in my garden. Then just rely on luck to see what I get.

When working with new garden beds, it let's me quickly find what seems to like that area of the garden. (I think the Japanese have some similar technique)

I'm a really lazy gardener though, my yields could be better but I don't want to put any work in aha

How do you keep track of which plants you have? Do you just wait for them to flower/fruit?

I'm in my third year of gardening so can mostly tell what is coming up pretty quickly.

I mean, this is a great idea too - I think the key is just realistic expectations! But I do this too... I like to do it over straw, and the straw kind of protects the seedlings by retaining a bit of moisture and keeping the seeds from birds and wind.

It's awesome for growing lettuces and herbs, I find - I just thin them out as they peak out of the straw and let the biggest ones stay, while the smaller ones get eaten as I thin them or make it into a salad or something for dinner.

But you're absolutely right, not worrying too much and just letting your garden do its thing is great. You might not get maximum yields of tomatoes or watermelons or whatever, but it can work well and take a lot of the fussing out of the equation.

> There's a bit of an art to starting from seed

It really depends. Some plants grow stupidly easy from seeds. A good example is tomatoes. You don't even need to buy seeds. Just go to a store that sells high quality produce, buy the best tomatoes you find (and taste them to make sure they're good), cut them open and and take their seeds. Boom, now you have several plants that grow amazing tomatoes.

This will work with some tomatoes, but many grown for agriculture are F1 hybrids which won't produce the same plant from its seeds. Even so, you're right about some plants being pretty easy. In cooler or temperate climates like mine, tomatoes aren't all that easy - they love heat and a decent amount of light. If you have the heat and light though, tomatoes can be like a weed.

A couple of other things my wife and I have picked up over the last few years for anyone starting out.

1. Mulch mulch mulch! It keeps weeds down and water in and will add organic matter to your soil as it breaks down. Your municipality probably makes tons of mulch from trimming trees and you can usually find somewhere to buy a truckload from them for a few dollars. We put down at least 3 pickup truck loads over the course of the first year in ~200 square feet of beds. Unless you are directly sowing seeds somewhere, you don't ever want bare soil showing.

2. If you have plants that seem diseased or have pests, rip them out or prune the affected parts off ASAP. We don't use pesticides or anything so the best way to keep pest populations down is to keep them from multiplying. Caterpillars become moths/butterflies that make many more caterpillars. If you eliminate the plant or leaves hosting them, they won't get that far.

3. The more you weed, the less you have to weed. This is the same idea as with pests. These things don't spontaneously generate, so every weed you pull up that doesn't go to seed first is one less seed in your soil waiting to pop up. If you keep on it, eventually the only weeds you have to worry about are ones that come over from your neighbor's overgrown beds!

If you actually want to feed yourself, just go to a Sunday market get 50kg of potatoes and plant them everywhere you can.

Low maintenance, hard to kill and great caloric yield.

Best to use certified seed potatoes so you don't introduce virus problems for anyone else growing potatoes in the area.

In case else is interested why, here’s an article about how aphids transmit viruses between potatoes, so it’s important to plant uninfected potatoes to keep the viral load down.

https://ahdb.org.uk/news/the-importance-of-testing-for-virus...

Really good advice! You have a book in you my friend.

> and plant them everywhere you can

I guess you implied "at your home", but I do love the idea of guerilla gardening. Never done it with produce though, just flowers and trees.

Many plants are still pretty easy to grow from seed, as long as you use good soil and find a spot with plenty of sunlight. Tomatoes and chili seem particularly easy, even some commercial varieties not optimized for hobbyists seem to grow okay in a greenhouse here in Northern Europe. I just took some seeds from supermarket vegetables.

Next I'm going to try some more traditional varieties that should be better for hobbyists.

How's your compost? I've reached the point where thats my first question for every gardener I meet.

Voracious, thanks :)

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