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Let's Grow Comics

Ep. 14 – Basic Gardening Skills to Hone In Early

Gardening is an activity that requires constant attention and physical work. If you don’t want it to take up so much of your precious energy, there are some basic gardening skills that gardeners should have.

This time, Uncle Damar will share his insights so that your gardening activities will be easier!

Basic Gardening Skills
Zahra:
Uncle Damar, what are the skills a gardener need to have to succeed?

Uncle Damar:
For me, there are six things they need to master gradually…

Alfa:
What are those, uncle?
Plants & Problems Identification

This identification skills do not only applied to certain plants a gardener can grow, but also to weeds, especially the infasive types, and the pests and diseases that can attack their plants. And even better if they have plants’s biological knowledge, e.g. to distinguish the dicots and monocots, so they can take care of them correctly.

There are a lot of free informations, especially from books and internet. So you can learn how to identify plants and their problems faster.
Soil Analysis

The function of soil does not limited to protect roots and reserve water. They can also be nutrition storage that the plants need to grow. And not every soil has the same quality.

If you realise that your soil is suffering from nutritional defficiency, your task is not just adding fertiliser, but to understand which nutrition is lacking. As you learn, you’ll have a solid knowledge and experience in that area.
Design & Planning

A garden that is well-planned will not only look beautiful but also encourage the growth of its surrounding ecosystem as well as enrich biodiversity.

Other than preparing a good garden design, growing plans and daily tracking can be handy when it comes to increasing efficiency in our gardening work.
Fertilisation & Pest Control

By understanding when we should apply fertilisers or add fresh compost, we can help to decrease over-fertilising impact to our ecosystem. If it’s good for nature, it will be also good for us too, ecologically and financially.

Pest control can be done periodically, starting by routine check. If your plants started to show the signs of pests colonisation, you better start to find the source, to prevent death by pests on your plants and to minimise pesticide usage.
Propagation & Pruning

Growing plants from seeds is not the only way to grow a plant. In fact, most gardeners do their own propagation, and it's way more practical and economical. And also, there are various ways to propagate plants, so you need to identify the plant first.

The right pruning techniques can also help to boost their growth. For example, deadheading can help the plant to grow more branches, leaves, flowers, or even fruits.
Plant Diseases & Treatments

Knowing potential problems that could arise from your plants can show you the best way to treat it, effectively and economically. Even just by paying attention to its ecosystem goes a long way.

By doing so, we can reduce our dependence to chemical solutions, and taking better care of our garden’s ecosystem, and reduce the adverse effects to our ecosystem and financial well-being.
Zahra:
Wow, those points are all connected!

Alfa:
What about for beginners, uncle?

Uncle Damar:
I have some tips…
Uncle Damar:
Wait for my tips on the next episodes, okay?