 is crystal from crystals didn't garden aka crystals did and last summer I had my first ever big garden and while it was super successful and super fun I definitely made a lot of mistakes along the way so today I wanted to talk to you about five mistakes that I made as a beginner gardener and give you some tips to help you not make those same mistakes as well so the first mistake I made was just being disorganized and not having much of a plan I knew I bought seeds and I bought and I knew I had I had pallets and I knew I wanted to grow in that but that was really the extent of my like planning and so it kind of became overwhelming and I was doing a lot of like learning along the way failing along the way all of that so a tip I want to give you is to just ask yourself you know certain questions that you have an idea of what you're working with and how you want to get your garden started stuff like where what are you going to grow where will your garden be located how much space do you have to work with for your garden especially how much space do you have for your for any of the type of crops that you're growing when will you have time to garden and also just like why is the location that you hit that you chose a really good one kind of asking yourself these questions will really kind of help you not feel so overwhelmed as you go into you know the growing season having a journal is very helpful to as well as maybe making like a photo diagram just like the space you're working with and kind of like drawing out and placing where you want to put your different veggies and fruits on there that's something I'm utilizing this year and it has definitely been way more helpful my second mistake that I made was not providing my crops with adequate lighting the plate the those places that I had put certain fruits and certain vegetables that they weren't getting enough sun a quick anecdote I had my tomatoes in my east flower bed and that flower bank it sprinkles of sun in the morning then shade and then sprinkles of sun later so it doesn't get that full sun most crops need six to eight hours of sun a day tomatoes included so once I moved them to my backyard which gets sun all day they thrive and I got tomatoes all summer so I say all that to say is you know I put the I put those tomatoes there because I thought they would be aesthetically pleasing you know I was like oh this is gonna be really cute right here this is what I want but you know especially when gardening it's not about what we want especially when we think about placement it's about what's going to be good for the crop and how it's going up and putting it in a place where they're going to be able to grow abundantly and efficiently so just make sure that anything you're growing pay attention to the line requirements if it needs full sun give it that full sun it needs less then pay attention to that as well the thermostat I made also has to do with plant placement that was just planting things too close to each other when I had my transplants from seeds I had seeds I had cultivated or just transplants I bought I would you know kind of bunch them up I did that with my tomatoes I did that with my squash and I just kind of have them all kind of close together when you read the packets and a lot of these that they say they need like three feet apart but because everything was so small I just wasn't thinking about you know the end goal of like this stuff is going to grow so it needs room and especially viney vegetables like squash pumpkins and watermelon they are going to vine out they can go up to like 30 feet I've heard so I say I'll just say make sure you're paying attention to the the placements of your your plants your seeds whenever even when you're planting a small or big that placement will determine how well everything is going to grow and it will also make sure that you know the plants aren't fighting for nutrients fighting for space fighting for resources so make sure you give them that room so that they can grow abundantly and you know just grow really well so the fourth mistake I made was not keeping up with weeds or just like grass maintenance I had put down cardboard put my pellets on top of the cardboard put the dirt in there and then that's where I put in my plants but you know once the cardboard broke down it allowed new the grass and the weeds to kind of grow up even around the perimeter of the garden I had put cardboard in a little bit of mulch I didn't put enough and there was just it just got really overwhelming and just it grew kind of wild weeds coming up with the beds grass on the perimeter very hard to maintain especially when it gets to that point so this year something I'm going to be doing with in all my beds and around the perimeter of my gardening is adding mulch mulch is so good not only for keeping moisture in the soil whenever you water but it's also good for like keeping weeds away if you can pile it up to like four or five inches or even higher then no weeds or grass or anything will be able to grow up grow up through it so I'm going to be mulching this year and mulch is definitely going to be a really great remedy to help you keep those weeds and grass down in your garden um also just having a raised bed like off the ground that was very helpful too and then the fifth mistake that I made was just not being patient I was very impatient at times especially when I was making seedlings if they didn't sprout I would maybe throw the dirt in another container only to see it sprouted later you know or just watering when I didn't need to water or picking tomatoes that were not ready but you know they that weren't fully ready they they were you know they weren't ripe or anything so different things like that and as someone who struggles with patience already like gardening has definitely given me the space to really like become more patient and you know let things like go just like trust you know just let things grow and just trust in the process so I just want to encourage you to to just really like be patient with yourself and with the garden this year most crops even take about 90 to 100 days to even fully mature so that means that they need time to be able to grow and develop we did our part as you know planting and giving them you know nutrients and giving them a good space to grow um now it's time for them to do their part so be patient trust the process it'll all go well all right y'all thank you so much for um watching this video I hope this really helped you think of you know things to avoid or just even maybe things that you hadn't thought about as a beginner gardener um thank you again for watching again I'm Crystal from Crystal's Den in Garden aka Crystal's Den and I can't wait to talk to you again next time