Suggestions needed for planting garden...

[morningrose]

First time house owner last summer, this spring I'm thinking of a beginner garden.
What plants live easily?
What type of seeds I should buy and where should I buy?
Any plants that can live in winter? Should I place them inside?
Love roses, tulips,different flower colors , in veggies tomatoes, chillies and strawberries in fruits.
Your suggestions are appreciated.

[TrueNorthTreasures]

I love flowers and admire people who have a knack for creating beautiful flower beds. I dabble, planting flowers I like, but don't have a ton of experience growing them. That being said, flowers that were easy to grow for me include dwarf sunflowers (e.g., Teddybear, Sunspot, etc), pansies/violas (a must-have in the flower bed every year), Scarlet Flax, Calendula, pink lavatera ("rose mallow"), marigolds, zinnias, wooley thyme (I love this around the edges of the flower bed!) and Creeping Thyme (the bees love it and it produces masses of pink flowers). The only thing to consider with the Scarlet Flax, Calendula, pansies, and Creeping Thyme is that they self-seed readily. That is great if you want them to come up/spread a bit year to year, or not-so-great if you don't want them coming up every year.

For vegetables, I find these vegetables easy to grow:
-Swiss Chard
-kale (especially curly kale)
-dry bush beans (especially the early, smaller varieties)
-beets
-carrots
-tomatoes - bush (or "determinate") tomatoes are good for beginners, as you usually don't have to stake them and you can grow them in large containers in a sunny, hot location.
-basil, chives, sage

I love growing heirloom varieties of vegetables and flowers, but there are many hybrid varieties that are easily purchased almost everywhere (Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, online seed stores, grocery stores, etc). My favourite businesses for heirloom seeds include Heritage Harvest Seed, Salt Spring Seeds, Annapolis Seeds, and Baker Creek Seeds (this one is American, but has a great variety).

[Durham Couponer]

I second container gardening. It gives you a chance to find out what will grow in your yard, what you can maintain (how much water, pruning), what the critters will eat before you can pick it.

Loblaws stores sell preplanted tomato and pepper plants, lettuce and kale bowls, strawberry pots and hangers. I've grown onions, green and cooking, in big pots. A few stalks of corn or a raspberry plant doesn't take up much room. Grapes will gobble up space- think up! In Ontario, most vegetables are perennial, and it's easier to buy seedlings because it's getting late to start seeds. Tulips planted now will come up next year, not this year, too. Strawberry plants may survive the winter under straw, someone else can maybe help with that.

[dirtdog]

You don't say what your conditions are. A couple of key questions: What kind of sun do you get? What kind of soil do you have?

With respect to sun, hot sunny areas will mean that you will look for different plants than cool shady areas.

When you go to your nursery, the information usually found in the plant container will give you a good general idea of where they should be put, how high they will grow (they usually grow higher than you think) and the kind of exposure they require.

Then do you want them to come up year after year (perennials) or are you ok with replanting. For shade gardens you will see a lot of impatiens (annuals). Right now, at least in some parts of Ontario, there is a blight affecting impatiens, so they may not be available. There is a sun/shade variety of impatiens that is resistant to the blight; they are nice and more versatile than regular impatiens, but are more expensive. Hostas are great for shady areas. They are perennials, so your first cost will be more expensive, but in addition to them coming up every year, you can divide them. We typically wait until the late fall to add to our collection. The plants look terrible in the pots, but they are half price or less and all you are interested in is getting good roots.

For sunny areas there are a much wider choice of options - the standard annuals like marigolds, petunias, etc. all do well and are easy to care for. Often you will find them on sale early in the season. If you are planting a big area purchasing flats is the most cost effective way of doing so. And there is a great selection of perennials for sunny areas.

The most expensive way of buying plants is to buy pre-planted containers. We are always amazed to see people paying $40 or $50 for a container that has about $10 worth of plants in it.

Container gardening has its own issues. We come and go during the summer, and because our containers are near a stone wall on a stone patio facing south they can get baked pretty quickly. It got to the point where because plants kept dying on her my wife (who is the flower gardening guru in our house) limited herself to bullet proof varieties, but they tended to not have much colour. A couple of summers ago she discovered a product called waterdots. They hold a lot of water. You mix them in your soil around the roots. Now she finds that she can include petunias and other plants that require watering more regularly. They are hard to find but are available on the internet.

I have my own vegetable garden. I grow way more than we need, but share with family, friends, and the local bunny and deer populations. The reality is that vegetable gardening is a bit of work and if you are doing it to save money that's difficult as when your veggies are ready so are all the farmers and prices in the stores typically are at their low points. However, a lot of the stuff that is commercially grown is done so with shipping and appearance in mind rather than taste. Tomatoes are a classic example and my own pet peeve is corn. It seems that the only stuff around are varieties of peaches and cream. I know why they do this - the stuff is very sweet and matures early. Problem is, it doesn't really taste like corn, just sugary. The other problem is that while you can get yellow corn seeds, corn takes up a lot of room in your garden as it needs relatives to pollinate and sucks up a lot of nutrients.

Finally, enjoy your garden and recognize you will make mistakes. They are fixable; you just yank them out. (Plant about a third of the foundation shrubs and bushes you think you need. They usually get big. If you are using a landscaper associated with a garden centre they will do a design that has way more plants in it than necessary. It will look ok at the start but within a couple of years you will be ripping out a lot of green. Expect your foundation planting to look sparse at the start, unless you buy relatively mature - aka expensive - plants.)

I just read an article that claims gardeners live the longest. Glad to see you are getting started early.

[Frugalbigmama]

I am starting a bunch of containers inside this weekend. Then will put out when the weather is nicer. I found some awesome long ones on the side of the road that I hope will be good for lettuce! Hoping to have enough even to add to tacos and burgers. Planting in my mother's big garden all the things I need to make pasta sauce and soup etc so we can harvest and batch cook and freeze!

[super807]

You didn't say if your new house has any existing garden beds or not. If you do have existing beds, as you are new to gardening, stick with just those for this year, until you develop a feel for what you like and how well it will grow in your conditions. If you do have existing beds, you will also want to be waiting to see if you have any perenials already planted. My columbines and daylilies are already greening up, and I noticed that my columbines have spread, but that's because I know the difference between them and the weeds.

Spring bulbs (tulips, daffodils, hyacinths) are planted in the fall and come up the following year.

My dad grew beautiful tea roses for years, and I know that they do require some TLC, but can be very rewarding. I'm not really into roses, so haven't tried, so have no advice.

The difference between annuals and perenials is that the perenials come back year after year, but the annuals don't, you have to buy them again. Before I had my own garden, I wondered why anyone would plant annuals, as it ends up costing more. I know understand the appeal of annuals: perenials have a short blooming season, while the annuals will bloom for months. I had annuals blooming last fall until they got covered in snow! I love colourful flowers, so I choose to plant mostly annuals.

When picking flowers, you will want to pay attention to the hardiness zone you are in (probably a 5 or 6 as you are in GTA?). That means plants rated for zones 1 through 5 should be okay for you. Things rated for zones 7, 8 or 9 are meant for milder climates and likely wouldn't survive the winter.

If you have a garden bed that is suitable for vegetables, you can plant those from seed or from starter plants. Vegetables generally need to be a sunny location - full sun, so sun most of the day, not just a few hours.

This is my third year with a vegetable garden. I established it at first because I wanted herbs, and thought why not make it big enough to grow vegetables too. I didn't know much about vegetable gardening, so I made some mistakes, but some things grew well, and it felt awesome to eat food I had grown myself (even if our first cucumber had the weirdest shape ever ). I bought most things already started the first two years. I've learnt more about vegetable gardening since then, rebuilt my garden so it can have a higher yield, and just planted several things from seed on the weekend (carrots, spinach, peas, lettuce, beets) and will continue to do plant over the next month.

Several herbs are really easy to grow, if you like using fresh herbs in the kitchen - sage, thyme, chives grow well. Rosemary generally doesn't survive Canadian winters outdoors, but can be brought indoors in pots. Herbs can be grown in containers i (except for a few) or in the garden bed.

[morningrose]

My garden was full of lawn and lawn dried away.So I made space one side and spread out cilantro seeds ,basil seeds according to instructions on seed packets.
I bought 5 flower pots annual ones .Next week I might be improving my garden a bit.
Thanks for valuable inputs .

[SavvyLady]

I found when I was starting out I planted what I liked, I planted a lilac tree, tulips, daffodils, iris', these are sure things and will come up every year..I like a weigilia bush gives lots of color..as people mentioned you need to know if you will be planting in full sun, shade, what kind of soil..then go with what you like..also go on pinetrest( I spelled it wrong on purpose)..good luck, your garden will bring you years of enjoyment!!

[bridgetdevers]

The best way for it is to take help from gardening service provider.