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Vegetable gardening is no longer just a passion. Veggie gardening has turned into a clever and healthier approach to help deal with flucutations in the economy and to combat the rising cost of living.

It wasn’t long ago we went through a recession here in Canada which made it tough to make ends meet. We were so grateful that we had started learning about vegetable gardening as it has saved us a lot of money on the grocery bills. More and more each year as we increase the size of our vegetable garden.

We Got Our Friends And Neighbours Involved

It’s wonderful having vegetable gardening friends who bring fresh vegetables right to our front door. Barb, one of my guitar playing friends would even bring over extra preserves she made herself. Mmmm, so good.

Now we share vegetables we can consume fast enough, although this year we are planning to have Barb show us how to preserve vegetables for the winter.

Grow Things That Are Easy To Grow

Our first vegetable garden was a container garden as we didn’t have permission or space to dig up in the yard we rented.

When we started growing tomatoes in containers we really didn’t realize how many tomatoes we would produce. So many we had to give most of them away before they spoiled.

We were definitely saving some money on the grocery bills by growing our own produce but it gets better. The following year we got together with a few friends and planned how we could benefit each other.

What did we do? Well each of us grew things we could share with each other but we grew different things. Friend one would grow buckets of tomatoes in a variety of kinds and another would grow something different we could all share.

It’s amazing just how much produce we had that we didn’t even grow and still saved on the grocery bills.

This year my wife and I are growing tomatoes in abundance, enough to share but also enough to keep for preserves next winter. Tomatoes are a big part of our diet as we put tomatoes in everything, pretty much.

We learned that we don’t want squash in our main vegetable garden as they tend to grow through everything else so we created a new location for squash and we’re growing enough to share with our team.

Take your time learning about vegetable gardening and you can start saving money every year just like we are doing with our vegetable gardening experience.

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Were you aware raised beds are a quite well-liked strategy for growing vegetables. We have found a number of benefits to raised bed veggie gardening.

Using raised beds really do make growing vegetables significantly less difficult, and they can even produce a larger harvest at the end of it all.

Advantage #1 – Use Much Less Space To Grow A Lot More

One of the greatest advantages to growing in raised beds is the reality that you simply can save a whole lot of space over traditional gardening. In the event you plant in rows, as a lot of people do in classic gardening, about half of your garden space is taken up by the paths between rows!

That’s a lot of wasted space. But in case you plant in raised beds, you save a good deal of space, and it is possible to plant a lot more per square foot than you could in rows. This signifies you are able to harvest a great deal far more create from the exact same quantity of space.

Advantage #2 – Less Work Preparing Soil

Yet another distinct advantage is the reality that you can have good soil much more simply than you could in a classic garden. In a standard garden, you have to mix your compost in together with your tilled soil. This signifies you have to very first use a tiller to loosen the soil.

Then you’ve got the back-breaking job of turning the compost into the soil. This can take a very long time, and is quite challenging function. With raised bed gardening, you’ll be able to just use compost as your soil!

You are able to choose to till the soil underneath your raised bed, or you can leave it alone. Most plants will grow without the tilling of the soil underneath. Then it is possible to just fill your raised bed frame with compost and plant directly into it. It’s certainly much simpler than turning compost into existing soil.

Raised beds are typically about four feet wide and 6 feet in length. They’re produced from a wooden frame set on the ground, often on tilled earth. They’re generally spaced about 18 to 24 inches apart to enable for walking between the frames to care for the plants.

Raised beds are normally separated into 1 foot sections, with each and every section holding a certain number of plants based on the size of the mature plant. Very large plants may possibly need to have an entire 1×1 foot square. Smaller plants might be planted four, 8, or even 16 per 1 foot square. It is possible to plant up to 16 radishes or carrots in a single square foot!

In order to divide your raised bed, you would section off 1×1 foot areas. Then you would section those off into smaller sections based on the size of the plants you wanted to grow there. For larger plants like tomatoes or broccoli, you’d just plant one in each and every square foot.

Should you wanted to plant lettuce, you can fit 4 per square foot, you you’d divide each square foot into four equal squares. For radishes or carrots, you’d divide every single section into 16 equal squares. When the space is divided making use of string or small pieces of wood, you plant your seeds or seedlings in the center of every section.

An additional great benefit of raised bed gardening is the reality which you don’t have as many weeds to handle. Because the soil you place on top is usually fresh compost or soil mix, there shouldn’t be as several weed seeds in it as there could be in tilled soil. Any weeds that do make it into your garden are easily spotted and pulled out.

Raised bed gardeners typically find caring for their gardens considerably easier. With fewer weeds and plants that are closer together, gardening becomes a pleasure rather than a chore. It is an excellent approach to get far more create out of the space you might have obtainable, and it’s typically simpler, too.

I work from home and love looking out my office window at our raised beds.

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Pests can be a serious issue for the majority of home gardeners. A few varieties of insects can destroy a crop. For some bugs it takes only a couple of hours!

Let’s take a look at some of the most common vegetable garden insects.

We will take a minute to check out how to distinguish them, and a way for getting of eliminating them.

1. Garden Pest: Aphids

The Aphid is an extremely common vegetable garden pest in most places. You will most often spot clusters of these kinds of tiny soft bodied pests in various colours.

They might be red.

How To Rid Your Vegetable Garden of Aphids

• 1. For most people, they find the Aphids and destroy them manually by removing and destroying the leaf they are on. If the entire plant is infested you can pick them off and get rid of them.
• 2. Using Neem Oil is a great method to rid yourself of Aphids in your gardens. Another is to use insecticidal soap.
• 3. I personally think using Lady Bugs to get rid of Aphids is a pretty cool method, plus I love watching Lady Bugs in action.

2. Garden Pest: Beetles

There are a lot of beetles that like to munch on your veggie garden. There are specialized beetles for most veggies, such as potato beetles. There is a rather lengthy list of them meaning you’re going to need to focus on each type of beetle for the remedy that will get rid of them.

Beetles may be cute but they can also be quite annoying when you see all the leaves they can munch down in a day. They’re not so cute after that.

You can pick beetles off by hand if you have a small garden. However if you’re looking at too many to hand pick then you can spray your plants with an insecticide that poisons them.

3. Garden Pest: Borers

Borers get into the stems of plants like melons, squashes, cucumbers, and pumpkins and eats them until they can’t get any more nutrition from Mother Earth. I first noticed it wasn’t growing as fast as the other squash and then I noticed the leaves wilting even while the ground was moist. I knew something was a foot. You have to cut the borers out of the plants. If the borer is found at the base, you’ll have to destroy the whole plant. You can use insecticide to try to prevent these.

4. Garden Pest: Grubs

I noticed my strawberries, on the north side of our property, weren’t doing so well. I decided to transplant some to the south side of the yard where they would get a lot more direct sun. That’s when I discovered dozens of big fat white grubs hiding under my strawberries. I am sure I found at least one with each shovel full of dirt.

Beetle grubs dig through the dirt, munchinging on roots and veggie matter. The grubs consume the spores along with particles of soil and other material. The spores germinate inside the grubs, and multiply rapidly in their blood. When the bacteria become very numerous in the blood they again form spores, completing the bacterial cycle.

5. Garden Pest: Cutworms

Cutworms usually cut off the plant stem at the base of the plant. The only effective way to control these is to use a paper collar on your plants about an inch below and above ground level. These bugs usually infest cabbages, peppers, and tomatoes.

6. Garden Pest: Corn Earworm

Corn earworms will eat the kernels off of the cobs while the corn is still on the stalk.

You can use a drop or two of corn oil or mineral oil on the tip of the ear of corn. Also be sure to destroy the entire plants at the end of the year. Don’t leave any part in the ground.

7. Garden Pest: Slugs

My first year growing zucchinnis I encountered problems with slugs. I tried getting them drunk on beer hoping they would fall in the bowl and drown but that didn’t seem to work. I think my neighbour was out after dark drinking my beer. So I went out and bought a package of Slug-B-Gone and they soon were.

8. Garden Pest: Tomato Hornworm

Tomato hornworms are one of the scariest looking garden pests. They eat the leaves and fruits of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. They are large, fat, green and white worms that look like caterpillars.

Because they have rather large horns they look scary so I wear gloves while picking them off my plants. I tend to stomp on them but you can also put them in soapy water where they will drown. I think it’s quicker to step on them. You could use neem oil on them as well.

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My plan was to get my rhubarb and strawberries transplanted to a sunnier area of the yard, right behind our home vegetable garden. My first plan was to do it in the fall but that didn’t happen so it was early spring but Mother Nature had other plans.

It’s been raining way too much for the past two months. April showers continued right through May and filled every hole I dug. It also made each shovel full of dirt weight more than anything I have ever lifted with a shovel.

I dug the holes wider and deeper than I needed but this way I was able to fill the hole with topsoil and peatmoss so the roots would be able to drain better.

I managed to get the rhubarb transplanted at the first of May but didn’t get the strawberries planted because it started raining again. You can see in the picture how muich bigger the rhubarb is compared to the strawberries and that was in just two weeks.

I didnt’ use all the strawberry plants as this year I am giving the Topsy Turvy planters a try. I’ve got a few friends who have tried them and they love them so I bought two Topsy Turvy planters, one for strawberries and the other for tomatoes.

Very curious to see how they really work.

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We are having the strangest spring I can remember in a while. Every time I plan to head outside to do some spring clean up it starts raining and blowing. We had the windiest winter I can think of as well which resulted in downed trees and broke limbs and branches. Glad no one was hit by any of the debri flying around our yard.

Mother Nature finally gave us a break and the rain stopped long enough for our garden area to drain and dry enough to walk around. A couple of days ago it was really only accessible to ducks.

I wanted to move or transplant a section of our rhubarb patch to a sunnier location in our backyard. I managed to dig the hole but it filled with water as I started digging and took a week to finally drain.

Would Someone Please Pull The Plug?

A few days ago the hole was drained and the sun was actually out so I made quick work of transplanting the rhubarb.

It was a pretty easy job once I was able to do it.

The soil in our yard is heavy dense clay and any time we plant anything we need to amend the soil with some compost and peat moss. We have been doing this for a few years with our vegetable garden as we keep increasing the size every year.

The Old Rhubarb Home

I used soil directly from the garden to speed things up. I was able to dig in our garden without any difficulty at all. What a huge different adding some top soil or compost and peat moss has made to our gardens.

Here is the our new rhubarb patch. It doesn’t look so hot right now but in a few days it wil look much better.

A New Sunny Rhubarb Location

Our next project, which I thought I could do at the same time but the rain started again was to transplant some of our strawberry plants to either side of the new rhubarb patch.

Looking forward to growing enough rhubarb and strawberries to make some pies and preserves.

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Home vegetable gardening is on the rise, around the world due to people trying to find ways to save a little money here and there to make life easier.

Rising cost of living never stops just follow gas and oil prices for a while.

My wife and myself have had the desire to have a place we could start a garden and finally we do so we did. Our visit vegetable gardening experience was the best summer. We experienced produce that tasted blessed.

We were hooked and the second year we double the size of our little home vegetable garden. This is our third year and we are doubling the size again so that we can try more things and even make some pies and preserves. All new experiences and we are saving money at the same time.

I joined a seed of the month club and get an envelope with 4 pack of seeds each and every month. I haven’t had a duplicate yet and that is so exciting. Now I start my veggies indoors and get to try brand new things.

This year I am planting some hot peppers. I may put those in our container garden though.

Our first vegetable gardening wasn’t even in a normal garden. We started with a vegetable container garden.

Jenny planted flowers and I planted tomatoes, strawberries, green peppers and beans. It was fun watching them grow from tiny plants. When we started our inground veggie garden we started things from seed instead of buying plants. We were getting into this home vegetable gardening.

The taste of the vegetable we grew was truly amazing. I grew raspberries that tasted so good they actually brought tears to my eyes. Raspberries are my favourite fruit yet I had not tasted raspberries that tasted that good since I was a little kid.

I learned from many years of enduring migraines just how unhealthy pesticides are so we go green all the way. Our planet and our grand kids will thank us for organic gardening.

If you haven’t tried home vegetable gardening I urge you to give it a try as it’s brought us so much, taste, saving money, sharing with friends, did I say tasty. The fact that we spend more time outside, well that’s just a bonus of having a home vegetable garden.

You can learn all you need to learn about home vegetable gardening online but I find it’s faster and easier to purchase a good ebooks like the one I’ve linked to here.

Leave us a comment and share your thoughts with us and our readers.

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We can’t get enough strawberries in our house, although we don’t really care for the strawberries we buy at the grocery store in the off season. They just don’t taste the same at all.

For that reason we are doubling the size of our strawberry patch so we can preserve some for the off season, maybe make a few strawberry and rhubarb pies.

1. The Way To Plant Your Strawberries

When planting your strawberries from their original pots they need to be planted to the correct depth or you could cause your strawberry plant to dry up before it takes root or rot from being to deep in the ground. The best guide is to plant them at the same depth as they are in their original pot.

When you look at your strawberry plant, once it out of the dirt, you will see a definite line where the plant was in the dirt from the pot. That’s going to tell you exactly how deep to plant it.

2. Your Strawberry Plants Require Some Things To Be Healthy

Your strawberries require plenty of water but not so much they drown. For this reason it’s wise to make sure you have soil that drains well. This will also keep your strawberry plants from getting diseases related to wet soil and plants.

As the strawberry’s roots get stronger you will need less water but once they start to produce strawberries you will need to increase the amount of water to get nice plump strawberries. Too little water is going to force the strawberries to be smaller and may even be dry.

3. First Season With Strawberries

We found this hard to do but it made for healthier strawberry plants. We pinched off any flowers the first year so that no strawberries formed. Instead all that energy went into making strong healthy plant and roots.

I would have to say it worked great as we had so many strawberries and they tasted like the strawberries we used have at home when I was just a little guy.

If you are using quality top soil or refreshing your soil with compost you likely won’t need to feed your strawberries, however if you feel the need to feed in the spring just give them a watered down solution of high potassium tomato feed.

4. Taking Care of Runners

Runners are great when you’re trying to get a strawberry patch growing but then they need to be controlled. We started our strawberry patch with just one tiny strawberry plant.

As the runners moved across the bare patch of ground we pegged each node, which is an individual plant. I moved each runner in the direction we needed a new plant, just that simple.

Allowing the runners to go wild like that drains strength for them main plant but we were not planning on having strawberries that year.

We even pinched off all blossoms so as to keep the plant stronger so it could spread. In just one year that one little plant took over the entire 4″x10″ raised bed.

5. Using Mulch Around Strawberry Plants

When the strawberry plants were large enough and numerous enough we started putting mulch around them to keep weeds from growing but also to keep water from evaporating. We were careful not to put mulch on top of the plants so we cleaned each plants.

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We’ve only had a vegetable garden, that wasn’t just a container garden, for a couple of years now and we are loving it more each year. The garden also seems to get a bit bigger each year as well. Eventually we would like it to use most of the property on the south side of our lot as vegetable garden.

We’ve learned new things about gardening each year, like our first year we learned that the direction your plant your vegetables can make a difference. We planted our first garden north to south which caused rain water to run down the rows and eroded a lot of top soil. So, lesson learned and the following year we planted east to west instead.

We had also planted corn and found that it blocked the sunlight once it reached a certain height so the following year planted it on the east side of the garden so that it would not block the rest of the garden. So now the corn is on the opposite side.

This year I am paying attention to the height of my veggies and will try to plant them so they don’t block anything.

The garden has been under water since the snow has been melting and only accessible to the ducks flying over. However after more than a week of having a swimming pool in the yard the ground has softened enough to allow it to drain.

This morning it almost dried on the surface. Maybe I will be able to make it a couple of feet wider this week end.

Our little garden is only 5″ x 18″ right now but that bigger than when we started. Maybe I can dig it so that it’s 6″ wide and if my son helps maybe even wider.

We still have lots of time to get our garden ready but if I have learned anything over the years I have learned that time flies and then it’s gone. So I like to get things prepared well in advance if at all possible.

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If you want to produce the best compost you just need to follow a few tips and your garden will thank you. Just a few minutes with the right information will save you from putting the wrong things in the compost bin.

We have a Compost Bin out behind the garage for a couple of years before I ever tried it. I am sure they previous owners were scared they’d mess up because it was never even used.

Even though it’s possible to compost just using a pile it’s messy, looks terrible and will attract animals looking for food scraps.

Constructing A Compost Bin

Our compost bin is plastic and kind of looks like an upside down garbage can but you can construct your own compost bin with a few stakes and chicken wire. I would suggest you make it about 3 feet square for the best air circulation. That seems to be just the right size for everything to work right.

Filling Your Compost Bin (What To Put In Your Compost Bin)

What’s the best or most balanced mixture for your compost bin, for getting the best results in the shortest time frame.

Green Yard And Kitchen Waste

The green waste is usually high in nitrogen. It’s the green waste that activates the heat process in your compost. Some heat generating yard waste is better at heating, like fresh young weeds that haven’t gone to seed yet. Be sure you keep those grass trimmings as they work well too. We also use our kitchen waste, fruit, vegetable, coffee grounds. We don’t drink much tea but you can use the tea leaves as well, even the bag.

Brown Usable Waste

The brown waste is usually high in carbon. Brown waste includes leaves that fall in autumn, all those dead flowers, plants and weeds. You can also use those cardboard tubes from Christmas wrapping paper, foil wrap, etc. If you use straw to cover flower beds or strawberries you can recycle that through your compost bin when you’re done with it.

What Other Things Can Go In The Compost Bin

We have grocery bags that are made from recycled cloth but every once in a while we will shop somewhere they give us paper bags, if they don’t have a lot of colour or ink we put them straight in the compost bin, well I rip them up to make the pieces break down faster. We also use our egg shell in the compost bin but I also use them to keep slugs out of my garden. Don’t forget the paper towels you use they can go in as well.

Air Circulation For Breathing Room

Your compost bin works best when it has a good flow of air and will NOT stink like some compost bins do, those without a good air supply as it take more bacteria when the air flow is not enough.

Each time you turn your compost pile it will get a new supply of air and will loosen the compost for better air circulation.

Just A Little Water

We keep our compost bin slightly damp but not too wet. Kind of like a sponge you just squeezed the water from, it’s just damp.

Our compost bin has a lid on it that helps to keep a lot of the moisture from the green waste from evaporating so we don’t need to use water much at all, but we keep a close watch on it in the hot dry weather.

We started our composting without adding any extra soil to help jump start the process but I have heard that it’s beneficial at the start so feel free to add some top soil between the layers of compost. A small amount of garden soil between each layer will introduce the bacteria needed to start the compost cycle. The soil that was still attached to plants we pulled and added to the compost bin was enough for us to have great results.

I was so impressed with the first compost we created. It was just like top soil you buy at the nursery but it was created right in our own Compost Bin.

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We have learned that as you do more gardening and learn more about your hobby you’re going to also learn about all sorts of gardening tools. Gardening tools that, supposedly, will save you hours of time and make your garden even more enjoyable as well as beautiful.

You’re never under any obligation to buy all the tools that you hear about or see online. Start simply with a few tools you need like we did. As time goes on you can buy the fancier equipment if you think you really need it.

Believe it or not you can do pretty much everything you need to do in your garden using only your strength. You can use your hands to do things like moving earth and your plants from location to location. The problem with doing all of your work the hard way is that it strains your body. Using the proper tools can help you save time and keep your body healthy and uninjured. Try using one of these gardening tools to help yourself out a little.

You should always have a garden rake in your tool arsenal. A garden rake is different than the rake you will use to gather leaves and larger objects around your front yard in the fall. A garden rake is sturdier and has shorter and stronger teeth that are made from steel. If you have projects of varying sizes you want an adjustable width garden rake and not a fixed width garden rake. You will save a lot of money if you opt for the rake with the adjustable width because it can be used in just about any gardening project while a fixed width rake cannot. Garden rakes are used to smooth and level out the dirt in your gardens.

Pitchforks are wonderfully useful gardening tools, even for gardeners who have no plans for large gardens. Pitchforks will do the same things that trowels and spades do but they do it bigger. Pitchforks are great earth turners, compost movers and soil aerators. If you have your own compost pile you will need to have a pitchfork because the pitchfork will help you turn your compost over as it decomposes. To keep the compost from losing its value and forming a gross, crusty shell use the pitchfork to turn it often.

Hand trowels are very helpful. Many beginning gardeners use their hands for moving dirt around. The more time you put into your garden, however, the more useful you will find your hand trowel. It can also help protect your hands. Most gardeners use their trowels to speed up the weeding they have to do as well as to shift the earth that surrounds their plants without disturbing the plants themselves. There are lots of different sizes of hand trowels and they can be used with pretty much any plant.

Gardening is thought to be a very relaxing activity. There is something inherently calming about the act of “playing in the dirt” that many people enjoy after a long or stressful day. Often gardeners start this hobby using only their hands. After some time has passed the use of gardening tools doesn’t feel so complicated. After some time you will be surprised to find that using gardening tools is so ingrained that you don’t even need to think about it anymore. The more time you put into your garden the easier it will be to use gardening tools. You might even learn that gardening is really fun!

Now, this website can give you more tips and information on the various gardening issues: Gardening Tips Online

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