>>174532...continued.
Some copy-pasta:
General gardening tips for anyone looking into gardening:
-Grow what you like to eat and make.
-Preserve your food through fridge, freezer, drying, pickling, water-bath canning, and pressure canning.
-Stagger the times you plant things so you have food coming on all through the season.
-Always plant more than one fruit tree and always plant more than one kind of apple tree; all for good pollination and fruit production.
-Use cold frames, hot beds, tunnels, greenhouses, etc to extend your growing season or grow year round.
-Use companion planting charts to plan out your garden spaces:
http://farmtopreschool.org/pdf/2.3_CompanionPlanting_Chart.pdf-Try gardening planner software:
http://www.growveg.com/Default.aspx-For clay soil, add sand from a non-salt water source (no beach sand!), add organic material like compost, and aged manure.
-Try out container gardening, in-ground "container" gardening where you only till a container-sized place to plant in for each plant, or try raised bed gardening. All these help you control the soil type with minimal work.
-How to garden:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/home-garden/gardening.html-Need to know what to plant at your time of year and you live in the USA:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/what-to-plant-now-zl0z0903zalt.aspx-Don't have ANY room at all for anything? Try growing spouts, in a jar. Google, "How to grow sprouts."
-Want apps for your smart phone for weather, alerts, times to plant, pest/weed ID, etc? Google, "Gardening apps for smart phone."
Search terms for research:
Companion Planting
Raised Beds
Vertical Gardening
Square Foot Gardening
Polyculture
Composting
Mulching
Vermiculture
Espalier
Aquaponics
Greenhouses, cold frames, hot beds, tunnels, etc.
