Home gardening has become a great hobby for Jenny and I over the past 6 years. How time flies when you’re having fun growing stuff. We started our first vegetable garden by growing our vegetables in containers.

Our first concern about buying vegetables at the grocery store is knowing where our vegetable and other produce is coming from. How much does it cost to get those veggies to us and what have they gone through in order to make the trip. Add to that the fact the cost is continually growing and it was time to start growing our own vegetables.

The vegetables and produce you are getting may be grown in the good ole US of A, maybe Mexico, or perhaps as far away as China. It’s not always the distance they are coming from though. With modern shipping methods today your veggies can still arrive appearing as fresh as the day they were picked, but they aren’t and the cost of getting them here, well I’ve already mentions that one.

I grew up with migraines and suffered regularly for more than 40 years before it was determined to be what was being sprayed on my food before I received it. Poisons kept me unhealthy and sick for most of my life but not any longer. For one reason we now know to wash our food thoroughly before eating or cooking and it’s made a huge differnce in my life and health.

The beauty of growing vegetables in containers is the proven fact that all of these factors are under your control. If you want, you can grow them organically from seed to harvest. If you prefer, you should purchase the seeds and pot them yourself in your own compost mix. However you wish to grow them, you’ll get an improved product when put next to grocery store produce.

Vegetable container gardening is not tricky. All you need is a pot, some potting soil, and some seedlings. When selecting your container, be sure there aren’t any noxious preservatives employed in the wood, or lead in the ceramic boxes. Five gallon containers are good for upright plants like peppers and tomatoes. Long containers, 24″x36″x8″ deep are a decent size for root vegetables such as carrots, beets and turnips and onions. Containers 12″x48″x8″ deep are a reasonable size for climbing veggies like cucumbers, peas and pole beans. This container can be placed against a wall and with added string or wire will give the vegetables a place to climb.

The best part of vegetable container gardening is the indisputable fact that you select the crop time. The produce in shops was picked for the benefit of the grower and seller. This fact produces vegetables that are often about indecorous. When was the last time you had a ripe, bursting with flavor, truly red, ripe tomato? If you want to add a gourmet experience to your mealtime, just add some truly fresh, ripe, flavour bursting plants to your menu. Once you start growing your own veg, you’ll find it’s an addictive experience.

For some more info on how to grow vegetables and a listing of veggies suitable for container gardening, check out l The proper way to Select Plants for Growing in Pots; Heirloom Flavour or Hybrid Yield? You’ll find all that you need to know about vegetable container gardening at Guide to Container Gardening.com

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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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You will find many explanations why people choose to pursue growing vegetables like a hobby. Many people feel it’s a soothing way to lessen their stress levels. Many people just enjoy growing their very own food.

Others get satisfaction from understanding that they are fully aware where a few of their meals are originating from. Regardless of what your causes of wanting to consider growing vegetables, it’s an extremely rewarding hobby.

Many people even choose to try and have cash with their growing vegetables. You may make some extra money by selling your veggies in a local farmer’s market like the ones we have here in Moncton & Dieppe New Brunswick or kerbside stand, or you can test to market your produce to some local nutrition store or restaurant.

When you are planning your vegetable garden, you have to select how large you would like a garden to become. You might be enticed to purchase a large number of different veggies and many types of types, but this might be more work than you’re really ready for.

First, you need to make a listing of all the different veggies you’d prefer to plant. Write lower something that involves mind. Take it easy if you’ll have enough time to plant or take proper care of something, or whether you really can afford it, just write lower everything you are interested in.

Once you’ve completed your list, you’ll start thinning it lower. The initial step to thinning your list lower would be to eliminate anything that exist in your area in a reasonable cost. Taters and cabbage, for instance, are often very affordable in many locations.

Then you definitely should eliminate anything that exist in your area that won’t visit a significant improvement in flavor within the store-bought version. Again, cabbage and taters most likely won’t taste considerably different should you grow them yourself.

What you need to possess in your list may be the produce you cannot get in your area, is usually too costly to buy, or would taste considerably better when grown in your garden. For instance, you might want to grow fresh herbal treatments since they’re very costly in shops.

You might like to grow tomato plants because it may be very difficult to get tomato plants that taste good in shops. And you might like to grow a number of niche lettuces which are difficult to find in your area, or are usually a little costly.

Many people can’t handle taking care of an extremely large garden. It’s effort. It may be very relaxing, but it may be back-breaking are employed in intolerable warmth. You need to deal with grime, bugs, warmth, bending, lugging, tugging, hoeing, and weeding.

In could be miserable work should you produce a garden that’s bigger than you’re ready to handle. Should you overload, your fascinating hobby can rapidly are a nightmare. So make sure to choose only individuals types that you really believe you’ll enjoy, and that you can’t locate fairly easily in your area.

Should you only eat peas once monthly, don’t plant an entire row! Should you dislike tomato plants, don’t plant them simply because you believe you need to for whatever reason. Many people plant things believe that look pretty within the seed catalog, despite the fact that they are fully aware they won’t benefit from the produce!

Take care not to get caught up. It’s tempting to plant among every number of tomato, or six different types of all kinds of peppers. Individuals seed catalogs are beautiful, but ensure that it stays realistic!

Learn more about vegetable gardening with this great little ebook.

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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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Our backyard and garden are low so they take a little time to dry out enough to work in after the ice and snow is gone. I thought I would get out and dig up the garden and clean up the yard but it’s either snowing or raining.

Now it’s past the middle of April and I still haven’t gotten into my vegetable garden. I want to make it about 2 or 3 feet wider before planting as well.

It seems like we get a couple of day with some sun and it almost gets dry enough to get out and start but before the water’s gone it rains some more.

My poor strawberry patch may have seen it’s last days as I made the mistake and removed all the leaves we had covering them for winter. They looked happy and started turning nice and green but then we got freezing rain and then more snow and frost that may have just killed them.

I won’t know for a few days as they are once again covered in snow.

Maybe I should be planting some snow peas or something.

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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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