Starting a Vegetable Garden ~ The Basics
In this day and age, more people are trying to start a vegetable garden. It’s great for the environment, and for your wallet. Growing your own food is rewarding and saves you quite a bit of money in the long run. Starting a vegetable garden is pretty easy, you just have to know the basics.
The first basic to planting a vegetable garden is what you will put the plants in. If you are going to plant directly in the ground you want a good mix of sandy and clay soil. This will let your plants have water, but also let the water drain. You can ammend soil by adding compost or other organic matter. If you don’t have room to plant in the ground you can plant your veggies in a pot or a larger container. For this you will want to get potting soil.
IF you want to plant your garden directly in the ground you need to prepare the soil. Planting in the ground requires you to have access to a roto tiller work and loosen up the soil. You want to make sure you pull out clumps of grass and any rocks to leave the soil clean and easy for your plants to grow in. Your plants will love it if you are able to ammend the soil a little with compost or other organic material. This will give your soil tons of great nutrients for your plants to feed on.
Now that the hard work of tilling is done, you can now start the planning. This is my favorite part. Figuring out just what I want to plant, and where it’s going to go. When thinking about little tiny seedlings it’s easy to go overboard, but you need to remember and take into account how big the plant will be when full grown. For example, zucchini can take up to 3 square foot per plant. So make sure you think about how much space you have available. You also want to consider where you put your plants. Some plants don’t grow well together. Potatoes shouldn’t be planted right next to squash, they just don’t grow well when next to one another. So make sure you think about who likes who and plant them either next to one another or well separated.
After you’ve gotten your plants put it the ground you need to make sure you water on a regular basis. You need to make sure you give your plants enough water to soak down into the soil, and not just on the top. When you water “deep” it allows the roots to grow a big network that will take care of the plant when the heat of the summer comes. A soaker hose is a great tool for watering your vegetable garden. It provides water directly to the roots of the plant and at a slow enough rate the water can really soak into the ground.
The work involved in starting a vegetable garden can be intense, but it only lasts a little while. Once your garden is in, you just need to water and weed it on a regular basis. It is very gratifying to see your seedlings grow into big plants and then start to produce vegetables. You have control over what goes into the garden, which gives you the best veggies around.
