Now’s the time to start your first garden, with some tips from the experts

It’s almost planting season in California. For those that might be ready to plant their first garden, here’s a tip from Marlene Simon, staff horticulturists at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory: Be ready to get your hands dirty.

“About 99 percent is soils and I don’t think enough people spend time on soil prep,” Simon said.

It’s about that time to start thinking about your spring garden and Simon, also known as “The Plant Lady,” said amending your soil is a good place to start. That’s the process of adding nutrients to the soil and preparing it for seeds. Simon said that gardeners should wait for a few dry days before adding compost or gardening soil to your garden — your soil should be crumbly and if you start immediately after a rainy day, wet soil could ruin the structure.

While it’s still a little too cold to start planting spring and summer flowers and vegetables, Simon said first-time gardeners can also start the process on a sunny windowsill.

Simon says all gardeners need is a space in their home that will give plants as much light as possible. You will need a regular or windowsill heat mat, cell packs or pots and seed starting mix. The heat mats are not necessary but Simon recommends them because you want to give your plants some extra bottom warmth.

Once you have what you need, all you need to do is follow the instructions on your desired seed pack. Grow indoors until it’s time to go outside.

Spring flowers and vegetables can start being planted in the ground when temperatures stabilize at 50 degrees at night, Simon said. You can transplant what you started indoors to outside either by transplanting your plants directly to the ground or simply moving the pots to your porch, balcony or yard where the most sunlight will be.

But ultimately, gardening is an art and you should have fun doing it the way you want to, said Ellen Sampson, a California Certified Nursery Professional who works at Talini’s Nursery on Folsom Boulevard.

Sampson said that instead of getting started now, first-time gardeners should wait until the weather heats up to start planting because you skip over the transplant process, thus making the experience a little easier.

Oak Park resident Robert Snider began gardening after taking a plant biology class at UC Davis 20 years ago. He started on a little balcony planting seeds and flowers in pots.

Snider said when he first started gardening there were many things he had to learn. There was tree growth to consider and the shade bigger trees produce. And there are challenges of different microclimates within your outdoor space.

Sampson said everyone’s yard is different, so when it comes to starting in the ground, beginners should think about what kind of space they have and where would be the best place for a garden to thrive.

“You just need to think about what’s going to be convenient for the space that you have because then you’ll be successful in planting what’s appropriate for that space,” Sampson said. “By summer when (the sun) is over head, that shady area may be in full, hot, blazing sun. Come July it’s going to be very hot. So think about where the sun is going to be moving.”

When you find that perfect space, then you can decide what kind of plants you want in your garden.

Nurseries will have seeds and plants in stock that align with the season, Sampson said. For spring and summer, you might find zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, alyssums, corn, pumpkins and squash, to name a few.

“Annuals are usually the easiest to start with because they give instant gratification,” she said. “Zinnias are very popular. They are a flat daisy like flower, and that shape of flower is particularly attractive to butterflies.”

Sampson said one of the major sins new gardeners tend to commit is not following the directions on the seed packages. For example, spacing is critical and depends on the plant. That will tell you how big your plants will be and how far apart they need to be.

“If you don’t give plants the amount of space that they need, then they’re more prone to diseases and other things because they don’t have the air circulation and the flow that they would need,” she said. “They start competing too much if they’re too tight together.”

Some pitfalls Simon sees from new gardeners include over-watering and fertilizing, spraying every pest in sight and forgetting that horticulture is not a beauty contest.

“I tell people to step away from your plants for a little bit,” she said, adding that plants will go through a slight decline after planting but after they set their roots down they will thrive.

Oroville resident Kristen Anderson shared similar ideas, saying all you need to do is enjoy the gardening process and step away from having vast expectations or worrying about controlling your plants because “you’re just on the back end of it.”

“I think it’s amazing how much plants take care of themselves,” Anderson said. “I live close to the Camp Fire, so my winter crop was really small in the garden. I thought they all died and then I came back a few weeks later and there were still some survivors.”

If you are still worried about a few plants dying at your hands, Simon said that everyone kills plants at some point, even experienced gardeners, so it’s OK if you do too.

“If something dies do a checklist of possibly why,” she said. “It’s sort of like being a detective.”

This story was originally published February 20, 2019 at 3:00 AM.