DIY Home Gardening: A Quick Start Guide for Beginners

Are you like Past Amaryllis who got a crazy idea in her head about gardening? Do you daydream about being surrounded by plants and eating what you grow? Are you a complete beginner with no idea how to start? If you answered 'Yes!' to any of these questions, you're pretty similar to Amaryllis of a year ago.

What started it was my obsession with playing Stardew Valley. The concept of giving up a corporate desk job and moving to a farm to grow my own food and sell it was a tantalizing one. I decided one day that I just wanted to up and do it. I'm lucky, because I have a friend who's practically a botanist, so I could ask him a question any time. Since not everyone is so lucky as me, I've decided to write a quick start guide for those that have the same day dreams as me.

To get started, let's make a self-watering container, or a SWC. You'll need a plastic 2 liter soda bottle or a gallon water jug, an exacto knife or sharp pocket knife, thin fabric (such as old bed sheets, pillow cases, or tired towels), cutting board, potting soil, water, and tape.

Take your bottle and cut it in half.

Next, take the cap off of the bottle and cut a small hole in the center.

Take the thin fabric, around 3 or 4" wide and 12" inches long.

Feed the fabric through the hole in the cap.

Reattach the cap to the top half of the container, ensuring the fabric is fed through into the container.

 

Take the top half of the container, turn it upside down, and nestle it into the bottom half of the container.

Tear off and discard any labels from the plastic bottle, then put tape around the top edge of the plastic container. This step isn't necessary, but if you're a slob like me, you'll have a sharp plastic edge that might cut you later. You can put tape around the edge of the bottom half of the container as well, but it isn't as necessary.

To finish off, fill the bottom half of your container with water up to the height of the bottle's cap. Fill the top half with soil while holding up the end of the fabric. Try and keep the fabric from being bunched up at the bottom. The purpose of the fabric is to wick water up out of the bottom into the top's soil, which will happen most effectively if the fabric is stretched up through the center of the soil.

Congratulations! You have now built your very own self-watering container! From here on out, you only need to make sure that the bottom is filled with water. No daily watering needed!

"But wait, Amaryllis!" you say. "What about plants? I'm not a dirt farmer." And you're absolutely right. Let me introduce you to a plant that you're probably very familiar with, but always took for granted:

The mighty green onion!

Why is the green onion so mighty? Well, if you save the bottom 2-3" of the onion, you can regrow it at home. Let's get into it. 

Take your green onion chunk and suspend it in water. You can do this by stabbing toothpicks into the sides and setting the toothpicks on the edge of a glass of water. Because I'm a slob (and have absolutely no toothpicks) I used 2 safety pins and a sewing needle.

Set your glass of water and onion on a bright window sill and leave it alone for a few days. Give it some time to grow it's roots out a bit, until they're an inch or two long. Then, take your green onion out of the water, remove the toothpicks (or other stabbing devices), and take it over to your prepped SWC that we made before. 

Take your finger and make a hole that the onion will fit cozily into, making sure to take into account the length of the roots. Insert the onion into the soil until the majority of the original clipping is buried. You may have noticed, but your onion has already grown a bit since you stuck it in water! 

Gently mush the soil around the onion to make sure it's firmly seated. You should have a result that looks something like this:

After a week or two, your onion should reward you by growing nice and tall! It'll also eventually put out more new, little shoots.

I hope you have found this article useful. Good luck, new gardener!