When you are at home, you want to relax and do something for yourself. You’ve spent the week taking care of kids, doing dishes, vacuuming, and making dinner. Maybe you’ve been having one long week at work.  What can you do at home for you?  It needs to be something relaxing and worth it.

The answer could be watching television. That’s right. Television is a way to sit back and relax. Put in a movie or TiVo your favorite show.  But at the end of the day, you have nothing productive to show for it.

That’s the difference between watching television and working on a garden.  At the end of the day, you will have something to show for it and you will feel great.  Even if you killed everything in the process.

Where to start?

My first suggestion is that gardening is as easy or hard as you want it to be. If you are just starting out, the first place to look is online. Yep, that’s right online.  Take a look at other gardens or what others are planting.  Then decide on what you want to do.  You can purchase self help books or gardening books, but really, you need to have an idea in hour head on what you are going to do.

Get some dirt!

Find out where you are going to get your clothes dirty.  Even it is small, say a garden box, it is okay. Just figure out where you want to be.

Don’t think too big

When you are just starting out, don’t start a garden larger than your own bedroom. This isn’t the standard for everyone just a good piece of mind. If you have days and days and days to work on it, this could be changed a little.

It you start something too big, it is much more likely that you won’t finish.

Choose Tools on a Need to Use basis

You can overwhelm yourself by choosing too many tools. It starts with a small shovel, a garden hose, some water, and some seeds. Don’t get much more complicated than this, at least the first day.   You won’t plant something today that will be ready tomorrow. If you find yourself needing another tool, then buy it as you go.   Don’t buy the whole store and make things worse.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t need more things than originally stated. But be careful about financially bankrupting your garden before it starts.

Choose foods that you’ll eat

If you are doing a vegetable garden, pick four or five vegetables that you would eat three times a week or more.  If you love radishes but would only eat them once a month, buy them from the grocery store. This goes for watermelon, pumpkin, and other large fruits.   If you are an experienced gardener, all bets are off.

If you want Flowers only

Maybe you detest thinking about eating food from your own garden.  Rest assured, flowers alone can be a fun thing to plant. Flowers allow you a wide variety of choices and if you kill them, what’s the harm anyways.

You can choose from indoors to outdoors, color and size. There is virtually nothing stopping you.  But, make sure you don’t chose a thousand flowers when ten different types is more manageable.

Just do it

Gardening is a great way to enjoy the spring and summer. It is virtually possible for almost anyone to do it. Of course, your small apartment may only have room from one plant, but do it. Take care of it and make it yours.

If you have a larger space, you will certainly not be wasting your time. It will be fun and you will learn something. In the end, you may just enjoy an entire summer’s worth of good and fresh garden foods. A television show surely can’t beat that.  But alas, if you love television so much, as I do, why not watch a show after you’ve done your gardening for the day.