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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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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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Are you looking to plant your very own vegetable garden but you’re not sure how to get started? Planting a healthy vegetable garden provides so many benefits including an abundance of healthy organic food and saving thousands on your grocery bills. I don’t know about you but I still remember the days when a tomato from the supermarket tasted like a tomato, not anymore unfortunately. Let’s look at some vegetable gardening for beginners tips to help get you started today.

Vegetable Gardening For Beginners – Tips

Preparation is the key to growing a beautiful and healthy vegetable garden. Planning is critical for setting up a vegetable garden that you can harvest every daily. Vegetable gardening for beginners does not have to be difficult with the correct planning.

First you must decide on your plot, the area for your garden. The ideal spot is somewhere that receives plenty of morning sun and protection from the elements such as wind. Although you maybe limited with the space you have available don’t be discouraged as you will be shocked at how much you can grow by maximizing the space you have. Ensure there is sufficient drainage for water run off.

Importance Of Soil Quality

One of the most common vegetable gardening for beginners tips you will hear is never underestimate soil quality. Soil is the life line of a garden do not underestimate it’s importance. You must ensure that your soil preparations include checking the soil and preparing it by testing its pH levels. The ideal pH level for your soil is 6.5, if you do not have a test kit you can go to your local garden outlet and let them test it for you.

Don’t stress if your levels are out of whack for the moment, you can purchase garden lime that will improve the pH levels of your soil. In a nutshell your pH levels will determine how much nutrients your vegetables will be able to receive.

Preparing Your Plot

Dig your plot and turn your soil over, ensure you dig into a depth of about 12″ (30cm) and remove any weeds you find by hand. Avoid using weed killers and they can effect your soil structure and levels. Once your pH levels are in healthy range, wait 4-5 weeks before you begin planting.

The vegetables that you grow will dependent on where you live. Speak to your gardening outlet that will buy seedlings from for the most suitable vegetables.

Ask about purchasing some organic fertilizer which will be the life blood of your garden. Organic fertilizers such as animal manure, blood and bones as well as compost are terrific choices for providing essential nutrients and moisture.

Growing Vegetables Year Round

The key to planting a successful garden is to have vegetables that you can harvest year round. By doing this you can rotate different vegetables to help ensure the health of your gardening by limiting pests and diseases. One of the most common vegetable gardening for beginners mistakes is insufficient planning and set up process.

If you set up your garden correctly you will have vegetables that you can harvest every single day. With the right planning your garden should require very maintenance and upkeep as it continues to provide fresh, organic food for you and your family for years to come.

Learn http://www.organicvegetablegardens.info vegetable gardening for beginners tips that will help you produce fresh, organic vegetables year round and save up to $5,000 a year on food.

Learn how to set up a vegetable garden that requires only 8 hours work per year! Discover how to plant a vegetable garden you can harvest ever day regardless of where you live at http://www.organicvegetablegardens.info

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We first started using containers for vegetable gardening before we had space for a vegetable garden. However, even when we did finally have space we continued vegetable gardening in containers for some veggies like tomatoes and peppers.

I started my first container garden while living in an apartment. Made great use of the balcony. Later, once I was married we rented homes but were never allowed to dig up a garden so containers were used instead.

Today we use containers so we can put them around our property and that way we are able to grow even more, saving us more money on the grocery bills.

Things You Should Know About Container Gardening

We learned a few things that will help you have better results with less trial and error. We did the trial and error for you so you don’t need to.

1. Use Containers That Will Be Large Enough

It’s easy to buy containers or pots for your vegetables that seem like they will be big enough. We found that we made the wrong choices a number of times. Since then we have learned to always buy the next size larger as that always seems to be the case.

I am not talking about containers to start your veggies in. For that you can use regular pots and then just transplant them into the larger containers once they are big enough.

After the first couple of years we had all the containers we would ever need.

2. Containers Need To Drain Well

Yes I have drowned a few innocent little vegetable plants because the containers I used didn’t drain well enough.

I will admit that most of the time it was me causing the drainage problems due to not putting enough stones in the bottom and eventually the holes in the bottom plugged.

3. Add Perilite To Your Potting Soil

Perlite, a siliceous rock is a special volcanic mineral which swells to a dozen times it’s original volume when it is heated to a temperature of approximately 871C, about 1600 F. During the heating process, the mineral particles pop like popcorn and form a granular, whithe snow-like material that is so light in weight it weighs only about 80-128 kg/cubic meter or 5 to 8 pounds per cubic foot.

Now This Is Really Cool

Perlite particles are made up of these tiny pockets of air which make for a lot of pitted surface area that holds water extremely well making it available to your plant’s root system without the need to be continually watering.

4. Plants Need Water

An in-ground vegetable garden can be protected from the heat of the sun and even from evaporation caused by the wind blowing over the ground. One can use different mulches to help moisture from evaporating from teh ground which will save water.

Containers don’t work the same way as they have all their soil above ground in full contact with the wind and sun. They can heat up really fast, cooking the roots and killing the plant. The water can evaporate much faster than most people think.

So between boiling your plant roots and drying them out completely one needs to come up with a solution.

Perilite comes in very handy in containers. Also using a drip irrigation system works well too.

We found that keep our containers on the lawn helped as the breeze blowing across the lawn is considerably cooler than on dirt or perhaps your driveway.

We baked a few veggies on our driveway before we realized the problem.

5. Vegetable Container Gardens Can Be Relocated

This wasn’t the case with my balcony vegetable garden but for our veggie container garden in the places we rented we moved our containers around to take full advantage of the sun. Vegetables love sunlight but our properties had mostly shade. So moving them around made all the difference the amount of produce we had.

Vegetable gardening in containers is fun and relatively easy. We only had to learn the few steps I have shown here. Even at the beginning when we messed up we still had vegetables and felt like we were doing something good and healthy for our family.

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We started our first vegetable garden in containers. That was before we had a home with a yard big enough to have a vegetable garden in the ground. Since that time we have noticed that people all over the country are starting their own vegetable gardens. Probably for the same reasons we started gardening, to save even a little on the grocery bills.

Back when we first started gardening was not a hobby, that came later when I realized it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

Gardening has been around since, well forever so I don’t think people decided to start gardening just on a whim. There is obviously more to it than that. People are gardening vegetables these days to combat rising costs knowing that they aren’t getting any pay raises to compensate for cost of living increases. Plain and simple.

Another huge factor is lack of job security and households where only one individual is working outside the home.

Like I said at the beginning our first veggie garden was a container garden. We wanted to grow some vegetables so we could save a little and eventually we bought a home with a big yard and now have an ever growing garden. However that little container garden produces piles of tomatoes, potatoes and strawberries.

Surprise, Surprise We Grew Veggies

We weren’t really certain we could grow anything outdoors. I like house plants and have no trouble growing them indoors but in here they don’t have to survive the elements, but we did fine, even though I made a few mistakes.

Mistakes Are Part of  The Learn Process

I have always seem to learn things the hard way but that’s me. It’s mostly self inflicted of course as I tend not to read instructions and try things without learning how first. I’m still alive and doing fine. Container gardening wasn’t really that hard to learn. My biggest mistake was not using containers big enough for the task. That mistake was easily rectified by getting larger containers and re-potting. Lesson learned.

After a few years of gardening vegetables in containers we found the home of our dreams, it even has two lots, one we turned into a small garden which seems to get a bit bigger each passing year.

But summer is gone all too soon and then a winter that’s way too long, so…

We Started A Herb Gardening In The Kitchen

We had already been container gardening so starting a container garden in the kitchen wasn’t a big step but it had huge results. Now we have fresh herbs all year long and love them in most every thing we eat. The only issue we had with our kitchen herb garden was that our kitchen windows don’t get enough sunlight during the winter so we moved the herb garden to the living room window and all is well again.

It’s Organic Vegetable Gardening Or Nothing

From the time I was 8 years old I suffered migraine headaches that would make me so sick and cause such pain. That was the same year I moved to live on a farm. It took me almost 40 years to find out the cause of my migraines, it was pesticides. My dad used pesticides on everything in our huge vegetable garden and it nearly killed me. Needless to say we don’t use pesticides in our garden and we wash all the produce we purchase very thoroughly.

Gardening has become such a great hobby now and it’s a hobby that feeds us healthy and tasty garden produce.

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