- take advantage of others’ wisdom.
Check out a local gardening group to learn from experienced people; To look up public resources about what grows well in your area instead of immediately jumping in to trying to keep something happy that has particular care needs. In the US, garden or agricultural extensions, and understanding what ‘USDA grow zone’ you live in, go a long way towards selecting plants that will thrive in your area and set you and your garden up for success.
- to learn to listen to what plants are telling us. learning to observe growth and behavior to evaluate health is a skill that applies to a lot of different plants and helps you build experience, independence, and thinking skills instead of focusing on what the packet says and doing that to the exclusion of what the plant is asking for.
Adding to this, you won’t necessarily know what a plant is saying right away when it looks unhealthy. Other gardeners can help; but also as you get a few seasons on with plants, you’ll learn better how to understand them.
Don’t freak out about all exotic plants/weeds. Assign a priority to each weed based on the damage they might cause and act accordingly.
Your time is finite, make the best use of it.
And if your time is REALLY finite, then consider checking out https://farm.bot which is an open source project for making an automated farm. (They sell pre-built package if you really want to, otherwise you could print all of the parts yourself.) The neat thing about that farm bot is that the robot would crush the weed before it have the chance to spread.
This suits a production environment.
Gardening also involves wild spaces, native areas, urban trees, erosion control, riparian and gully restoration, water bodies etc. There is no robot helping out there.
And if you are doing production and all those things listed above, your available time is very finite. I know from personal experience. Perhaps robot at home, people power in the field.
Very cool though.
The process is it’s own reward
Don’t let yourself become overwhelmed by all there is that you COULD be learning. Nobody learned everything at once. Just do your best, and as one pest or another destroys some plants, try to think of it as an opportunity to learn and wonder at how we manage to cultivate any plants to eat at all, because those fu—— … Sorry. Got a bit sidetracked there…
Anyway, caterpillars and aphids and slugs WILL eat your food for you. So don’t get too discouraged if it happens. You can try to spray, you can go out every night or so and pick them off if your garden is small (worked really well for our little patch), and you can try planting sacrificial flowers and herbs.
But just try to enjoy the process of learning, and know that you’ll get better as you continue.
As a beginner gardener myself I wish I had started with some easier plants. The easiest ones I’ve done which required very little knowledge to grow successfully were potatoes, strawberries, and mint. Be careful with mint though, it spreads very quickly and is hard to get rid of if/when you don’t want it anymore. I grew it in a pot to keep it contained.
Learn to test soil moisture with your finger. Too many new gardeners over or under water, and this is the best skill to learn early.