Planting Day: Gardening with TikTok

May 26, 2024 1 By Brodie Ziegler

Finally Time to Plant!!

I have been so excited to actually begin planting my garden since I decided to do this as my learning project. Throughout the week I have been watching TikTok videos on the best tips on gardening. Many of the videos I watched were quite helpful, I just searched “planting vegetable garden in Sask” and so many cool and informal videos came up!

Choosing gardening as my learning project made me a little bit nervous as I did not know which vegetables to plant or all the proper techniques on planting them. Between Google, TikTok, Thrive and of course, the people in my life, I have managed to gather a lot of useful information. Technology truly gives us the opportunities to learn and try new things with confidence.

After using the technology I mentioned above to learn new tips and tricks, I decided on what I was all going to plant. Many of the resources I found told me “plant what you most like to eat” or “plant what you have room for.” I only have a garden box so I had to be careful on what vegetables to choose from. My mom helped guide me on the next stages of my learning process. We went and bought seeds for lettuce, onions, carrots, tomatoes, sugar peas, peas and sunflowers.

Techniques Used for Planting

With all of this technology at my fingertips, I felt ready to tackle the actual planting of my garden. Here are a few techniques that I used for the different vegetables in my garden:

Lettuce – This TikTok helped me plant lettuce as I learned that you do not have to cover the seed and that sunlight breaks the dormancy of the seed. You then pat down the seed into the soil and water the seed down.
Onions – I used sets rather than seeds as this website told me that it is the easiest and fastest way to grow them. I then set the sets into the dirt, pushed them down so they sunk in a little bit and then lightly covered them with dirt.
Carrots – Make little rows and heavily sow the seeds. Using a lot of seeds is beneficial when it comes to planting carrots. Making sure the soil is loose is also beneficial and then lightly cover the seed with soil.
Tomatoes – Planting tomatoes is a little bit more difficult than the rest of the seeds I planted. They need more room to grow and I also need to place cages around them to support their growth. I bought the tomato plants grown already instead of as seeds so I had to plant them quite deeply.
Sugar Peas & Peas – Plant these seeds in shallow trenches about an inch deep and 2 inches apart. It was recommended to use a trellis but I am going to see how they grow without one!
Sunflowers – I chose to plant sunflowers because I love the beautifulness of them, lol! I planted these along the edge of my garden box as a backdrop for the rest of the garden. I planted these seeds about 6 inches apart.

Another technique I used was to buy little sticks that I was able to write on. I color coded them and wrote the name of the vegetables on each stick. After planting the rows, I stuck the sticks into the dirt so I can remember where I planted what.

Overall…

I really enjoyed the whole process of planting my garden. As I was in the planting process I focused on the way it was making me feel. It was enjoyable, calming and a good way to release stress. I was able to plant it with my mom and sister which also made me happy as I love spending time with them.

Before I started planting, I was thinking about what piece of technology I could explore. Since I used TikTok as a resource to learn from I also wanted to create a video of my planting process. I hope you enjoy it!