« Useful guide to make your landscape look great | Home | Easy Ways to Create a Beautiful Bonsai Garden »
The Novice’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening
By Flower | January 3, 2010
If you’ve decided to start vegetable gardening this year, then you are among the 7 million households that are beginning their first gardening experience too. More and more Americans are looking for fresher, safer, better quality and cheaper food that can be cultivated right in their own backyards. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans and carrots are some of the most popular varieties. Before you begin, here are some gardening tips on planning, implementing and maintaining a bountiful garden.
The first thing you’ll need to do when designing a vegetable garden is selecting the right size and location. For starters, make sure your location . Most vegetables require around six to eight hours of direct light each day for optimal results. If you have a more shaded area, you can place your spinach and lettuce there. As you assess your yard, make certain to take into account the shadows cast by your house, trees and storage buildings during particular times of the day.
Ideally, the garden will be handily situated close the kitchen, so you can tend to it with less effort and gather your crop without traveling a long way. The most satisfactory soil will be full of nutrients and drain properly, so you might have to add organic compost and use the right tools to aerate the earth before you start.
A gardening expert will usually tell you that raised beds are the best method for effective vegetable gardening. Garden guides love raised beds because they increase the growing area by reducing the amount of garden used for paths, they save fertilizer and compost materials, they are easy and convenient to work with, they work well with trellises, they are 12-15 degrees warmer than the ground so you can plant earlier, and they are beautiful to look at. To begin creating your raised beds, measure and stake down each garden bed and outline the beds with string. To raise the bed, loosen the soil with a shovel or fork and nestle your bed into the plot. Smooth the soil on the surface of the bed with the tines and back edge of a rake. Take your time when shaping the beds, for this step is very important. Each bed should rise eight inches above ground when all is said and done and the most productive raised beds are about three feet wide. You can line the beds with bricks, stones or wood, whichever you prefer.
Over the years, you’ll begin to fine-tune your vegetable gardening. You may find some crops do extraordinarily well, while others are a flop. You may decide to add new veggies to the mix or plant more of a certain crop that worked very well. Once your cool season crop finishes its season (like peas), you can try planting a warm season crop (like zucchini). You may also try a technique known as “interplanting,” which involves planting a quick-maturing crop like lettuce next to slow-growing broccoli. The idea is that you’ll harvest all your lettuce by the time the broccoli is looking to stretch out. Try growing plants from several different varieties to increase your chance of success and to find the best performing types.
Eating healthfully doesn’t have to be expensive when you plant a vegetable garden. From container vegetable gardening to edible landscaping, you’ll find the information you need at the Vegetable Gardening Site.
Topics: Gardening | No Comments »