Thank you, I really needed some good news today.

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, and Ukraine for anyone wondering.

Hey friend. First of all: breathe, you’ll be just fine. There’s nothing pathetic about feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world right now. I’ve recently bought a little allotment garden myself and have some experience with balcony gardening before that. Let’s break everything down to a few basic steps:

1. Look up your hardiness zones. This will give you an upper and lower threshold of the climate you’re working with and determine when to do what during the season. One starting point is plant maps but once you get started, you’ll find an abundance of resources. Select your crop accordingly.
2. Familiarize yourself with your soil. Depending on your plot size neither fertilizer nor compost will be an instant solution so it’s best to learn to deal with what you have. Heavy soil with lots of loam may be prone to water logged conditions, sandy soils hardly keep any water at all. There are plants that can deal with either situation. Select accordingly.
3. Light and shade. Whether you have a lot of shade or full sun, there is a crop for you. Just again, select for what you have not what you wish you have.
4. Try things, buy, plant, observe, just get your feet wet. Here is a simple example from my plot: I’m in Zone 8a, have mostly heavy soil and full sun. So stuff like rhubarb, some peas, beans, marigold, horseradish and cale mostly work right away. Carrots, Tomatoes or potatoes may need some more support but this can be as simple as adding some sand to make the soil a little lighter. If something works: great, let it bloom, collect seeds, profit forever. If not ask yourself if you can easily fix it or if the crop just may not be suitable for your garden. Just relax and see where it takes you.
5. Context. Don’t stress too much over fertilizer or soil improvement or all of those very expensive things. A well selected range of crops, a proper composting routine, a good source of manure, mulch and biodiversity supporting structures will ultimately bring you much further than any store-bought “quick and easy” solution. But it will take time. Look into concept like permaculture to see how you can link different parts and components of your garden. Not everything is applicable everywhere and at once but you’ll get there. Just stick to it and while you let your little experiments grow, read, read and then read some more about plant selection, long term (organic) soil improvement and also preservation (you’ll want to know about that as well at some point, believe me). Last note: Maybe as a starting point, to keep things neat and easy to handle, draw some inspiration from square foot gardening as it provides a very manageable, little plot with great yield. Best of luck on your journey and keep your head up.