TikTok Recommends Spending 50-85 Percent Of Your Gardening Doing This
Gardening, while a fun pastime, is not always roses and butterflies. It can take dedication, time, labor, money, and planning. One TikToker is changing the gardening game with a detailed, methodical approach. Some of us like to garden willy-nilly, while others are more organized. Well, TikTok user @gardeningsimplified shows us how to be professional and exacting with our gardening. She has it down to a science, and she's sharing it with us. A video shows her planning process for the season, and it's more involved than you would think. However, this level of detail and organization can lead to a more bountiful and abundant harvest.
Growing a healthy garden, especially for beginners, can be overwhelming. There are a lot of elements to consider: when to plant, what to plant, how to plant it, direct-sow or transplants, lighting, soil type, harvest, etc. Getting organized saves you a lot of headache, time, and money in the long run because you can figure out what works best and what goes where before you begin planting. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you can always seek an expert's advice for the best layout for your garden. However, with the help of this video, it should be pretty straightforward.
Things to consider when planning out your garden
When planning out your garden, there's quite a lot to consider. As you can see in the above video, @gardeningsimplified has lots of papers in front of her and software for creating a digital layout. The first thing she does is print out the moon calendar for 2024, which then allows her to mark the waxing and waning parts of each month of the year, which will dictate what kind of gardening she will be doing during that time. She states that waxing periods are best for planting aboveground crops, while the waning periods are best for planting belowground crops.
In addition to her lunar planning, she marks the last predicted frost date, allowing her to plan accordingly. She proceeds to show how she has a complete layout of all her garden beds, marked with each crop previously grown. This is important because then she knows not to plant the same crop in the same place next year, as the same crops will take the same nutrients out of the soil, which will deplete the soil over time. She then writes down the soil testing and composition results for each bed. Considering lunar cycles, soil composition, and what crops were grown in each bed last season are essential aspects of planning out a bountiful garden and harvest.
The importance of planning with the moon and natural rhythms of the seasons
Lunar planning — that is farming with the cycles of the moon — has been practiced for thousands of years across cultures worldwide. The new moon is traditionally associated with fertility, while the full moon is associated with harvest. This ancient farming method is not as far-fetched as we may think today. The sun inarguably affects the health and production of plants, so why wouldn't the moon?
The Farmer's Almanac is a publication that has been around since 1792 that records, predicts, and tracks astronomical and natural patterns that impact agriculture and growing crops. The Farmer's Almanac includes the sun's rising and setting, weather, tides (influenced by the moon), and how these patterns might impact growing certain crops. An updated almanac is published each year, and the moon is a central tenet of its planting guidelines.
Planning out your garden while considering astrological, seasonal, and other elements, such as crop rotation, can contribute to a more bountiful harvest. This level of gardening is pretty advanced and connects you deeper to the natural cycles and rhythms of the earth. The Farmer's Almanac website also features a digital gardening planner that makes this process much easier. They also have a digital planting calendar based on your zip code.