GET STARTED
Some advice we wish someone gave us
WHEN WE GOT STARTED
I won't lie, I was hesitant to start a garden because I understood what all it would take for it to be fruitful. Like most things, you won't become perfect at gardening overnight. It takes time and a LOT of patience. When we first started, we were only looking for seedlings. Finding vegetable seedlings was so hard to find but then we came across Burgeon in Spanish lookout, the ONLY place we found veggie seedlings in ALL of Belize. Can you believe that? A country that has all the resources to be Agriculture based isn't even equipped with nurseries that sell vegetable or fruit seedlings (we hope to change that soon). Everything they have for us to plant in our yards are ornamental which in reality is really sad! We as Belizeans have become very dependent on our governing institutions. We have forgotten that we came from people who use to work the land, grandparents and great grandparents who use to grow their own food and livestock. We might think life was harder then but just look at the situation we're in at this moment. Imagine you're cooking and need cilantro and lets say eggplant but can't go to the market because of the quarantine but then you remind yourself "oh shit, I got those growing in right outside" Trust me, it doesn't get better than that!
I wish we had someone to give us advice when we started out, we spent most of our free time googling and on YouTube to see what we needed to do to have a successful garden.
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Below you'll find some more tips and advice we thought would be useful to you!
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?
First thing you'll need is to have patience. Just kidding! Well, not really but we'll talk about that later.
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First we start with seeds.
There are different types of seeds you can choose from. There's heirloom, GMO and of course the seeds you get from your kitchen scraps which are probably from hybrid plants.
Heirloom Seeds are basically original plant seeds from a variety of crops that have survived cultivation for several generations with the help of many people like ourselves. This means that when the sweet peppers are ripe, you can pop it down to cook it and save the seeds and know you'll be getting the same kind of pepper again (granted cross pollination doesn't occur).
GMO seeds are genetically modified with the help of human intervention. They take genetics from different species and insert it into a plant with the hopes that the offspring will have desired characteristics. They aren't to be confused with HYBRID seeds.
Hybrid seed (or plant) is basically a cross between two of more unrelated plants. The two different varieties are cross bred which results in a seed that carries one or more favorable traits. Hybrid seeds are more favorable for commercial farming as the crop yield is far greater than heirloom which haven't been modified in any way.
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Personally, we prefer heirloom seeds because we hope to start saving the seeds from them for future use. We have had success with okra so far (very exciting stuff). At the moment,we're focusing on growing heat tolerant crops since we've already had a drought warning for 2020. We need to be intentional on what we will plant, don't plant crops like broccoli or cabbage because you're only wasting time, water and energy.
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Now, let's talk dirt.
It's very important to have healthy soil. Without healthy soil, your plants will not thrive. It's like if we keep eating junk food but expect our body to keep being healthy. It just doesn't work that way. With good soil you can achieve a great amount of crops. For our soil, we use a mixture of black dirt and what we sift from some cohune chippings. The cohune chippings work somewhat as mulch and compost. When it breaks down it will feed and nourish the soil. Your soil should be similar to how sand looks when it falls from your hand. You want loose soil for your crops to spread their roots properly and comfortably. We encourage the use to compost and other organic matter to be mixed in also.
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Seedling Tray/ Flower Pot/ Raised Bed
To get started you can use items from in your home without having the extra expense of flower pots. Lately I've been saving toilet paper and paper towel cardboard rolls to use as my seedling starters. You can also make use of old suavitel bottles, or old glass jars to start pineapples, old water bottles and many other items around the house. BUT we recommend you don't plant anything edible in those because the chemicals can seep through to the food you're growing. You can use those to grow flowers which attracts pollinators to help you get your peppers, tomatoes and other flowering crops.
In our garden, we have a few raised beds but most of our plants are in grow bags and containers. Raised beds are beneficial because your pets/ pests can't really get in them. One of the benefits of growing in containers/ grow bags is you can move them around to where we would prefer them, raised beds don't work that way. With raised beds you will need to be sure of the location you want it so I recommend (before you start digging) to go outside different times for the day and notice where the sun falls between the hours of 12:00-4:00pm. This helps because most crops prefer partial shade and can't handle the scorching sun. Plus it dries out your soil a lot quicker when exposed to the sun for longer periods of time which results in you using a lot more water. We need to be smart about watering our plants because some require more water than others.
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LET'S GET TO WORK!
It's about to get dirty and I hope you love it!
Once you have all your things ready to go, you can start filling your seedling trays or raised beds with dirt and seeds. Water to... oh yeah forgot to talk about water. You might wonder why I have to talk about this in here but trust me, you want to be smart about watering your plants. When we first started we used water directly from the hose and found that it worked but not too well. After some research and YouTube videos, we learnt that it's best to have a drum/bucket to keep filled with water. It's said that by filling a drum/bucket with water and having it sit a few hours will allow the chlorine content to deplete. This is essential because too much chlorine can accumulate in the leaf tissue which results in leaves with a scorched or burnt appearance. We also add some EM5 (micro organisms) when watering our plants to help improve soil life.
Back to what I was saying, Water to time. With the reset dry spells we've been having, it's important to water your plants regularly as to not put a strain on them. Some plants will get marks or but open when they have a spike in water. So just check your soil regularly, your suppose to be hands on in the garden!
Find fun things to build in the How to section above.