LHITS Gardening Step #3: Alternative Beginner Gardens

Welcome!

In Step#3, we’ll give you the quick and dirty on alternative beginner gardens like:

  • Container gardening
  • Hiding edibles in the flower beds
  • Using straw bales instead of raised beds

If you’ve already followed the directions in Steps #1 and #2, you should have a big box of baby plants and at least a starter pile of veggie trash cooking away for next year.

If, however, you fall into one of the three following categories, we recommend you learn about alternative beginner gardens.

Are you someone:

  1. Who has no yard to speak of?  If you have sun on a patio or porch and that’s it, then you just became a container gardener.  Ifyou have a small patch of sun, there is another option.
  2. Who like things close to home or is forgetful?  There are certain plants that I just won’t use unless they’re on my porch staring at me.  Worse, there are plants that I won’t think t water unless I walk past them three times a day.
  3. Who wants to start a perennial herb or fruit garden?  Perennials don’t generally work out well in your annual veggie garden.  They like to get big.  They don’t like people digging around their roots all the time.  They don’t require that intensely nutrient rich soil.  In short, they are a nuisance in your veggie beds.  But, if you don’t have another place for them yet, they are perfectly happy in other places.
If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then you are ready to learn about alternative beginner gardens!  And if you’re here for number 3, or are considering anything perennial, your first step is to go watch our free 8-minute webinar.  (Link will be added once the webinar goes live.)
Let’s Start Container Gardening!
See this post about my container herb garden.  There you will find full instructions on how to plant your common herbs.  And pretty much everything I said applies to any other garden plants you’d like to try.

Be sure though, that if you are here on this step because you want to grow tomatoes on your porch, that you read Step #1 and know about plant spacing!

 

Next, check out hiding edibles in your flower beds

We recommend this style of garden to the same people listed above AND anyone with a guerrilla gardening streak.  It feels COOL to know your asparagus are hiding out there among the rose bushes.

My potted herb garden mentioned above is actually in a flower bed, but it’s not concealed, really.  However, you can read my step by step plan for hiding my edibles in this post.  And you can see it in action in this post.

 

Lastly, check out straw bale gardening! 

This is a great option for people with SOME space, but not really enough for a whole raised bed.  It’s composting and gardening in ONE!

See how to do it in THIS POST.

 

Read More!

If you want to see some specifics on perennial gardening, see our posts on blackberries, asparagus, and blueberries.

To learn more about container gardening in general:

See Our Book

Available at Amazon, and on Kindle
Barnes and Noble, and on Nook 

Want to know more? In the next mini-course, we talk about lasagna gardening, DIY garden mixes and solutions and starting from seed indoors!

 

Beginner gardening series:  1)Beginner Garden in a Day, 2)Composting, 3)Alternative Beginner Gardens

Intermediate gardening series:  4)Lasagna gardening, 5)DIY mixes and solutions, 6)Indoor seed starting