6 Steps For Perfect Garden Planting

By gardener | Mar 6, 2009

For beginner gardeners, one of the biggest challenges is actually planting the plants! Getting them out of the pot, figuring out where to plant them and then trying to dig a hole the right size isn’t that difficult, but if you’ve never done it before it can be rather scary.

Here are 6 steps to perfect garden planting that will help any novice become an old hand at planting garden plants.

1. Deciding Where To Put Them

One important task of planting doesn’t have anything to do with planting at all! It’s deciding where to place your plants. An easy way to do that is to take them in their containers over to your garden and place them in the spots you think you might plant them in. If they don’t look good, then move them around. You can keep moving them until you have the perfect placement. Once you do, leave the plants there so that you will know exactly where to dig the holes.

2. Digging The Holes

When I first started gardening, I was really apprehensive about digging the hole. How deep should it be? What if I make it too big? Too small? It can be kind of scary, but remember if you make it too big, you can always fill in with the loose dirt. The general rule of thumb is that you want to plant the plant at the same level that it is in the container. So the top of the soil should be at the same level as the top of the ground.

Therefore, you’ll want to dig your hole as deep as the container. Actually, I like to go a little deeper or scrape up the dirt at the bottom so it is loose – that way the roots will have an easier time burrowing into the dirt.

You should also make it a tad bit wider than the pot so that you have some room to get in there and settle the plant.

3. Removing The Plants From Their Pots

Another scary task is removing the plants from their pots. After all, these fragile little things can be easily damaged so you want to go gently. They thing that usually works for me is to pinch the sides of the pot. This helps to keep the dirt from clinging to the pot. Then I gently grab the stem of the plant and sort of turn the pot upside down, letting the roots, soil and plant slide out. If your plant is really stubborn, you can always cut the pot away.

4. Planting The Plants

Now comes the fun part – putting your plants in their new home! The first thing you want to do is gently try to spread out the roots. Sometimes they are really compacted and you need to do a bit of tearing – not too much though. What you want to do is just loosen them up a bit so they grow down into the soil. Then simply place the plant in the hole with the roots spread as much as possible. Be sure the plant isn’t leaning to one side.

5. Filling In The Holes

Once the plant is securely in the hole and the top of the original soil is level with the top of the hole, fill the empty spaces of the hole in with the dirt you originally removed from it. Make sure you pat it down firmly – not too firm so that it is compacted, but enough so there are no air bubble.

6. Planting After-Care

Finally, you want to water the plant thoroughly and you might even want to give it some starter fertilizer. What I usually do is dig a shallow well around the plant kind of like a moat and let the water run in and fill this up. Then I turn off the water and let it all drain in and repeat the process one more time. You might find that you need to fill in a bit more soil as it settles down from the watering.

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