A raised vegetable garden is not just a pretty ornament to make your garden look nice – they can produce an endless supply of healthy food with very little time. In this article I want to point out just how much time you save with a raised garden as opposed to traditional gardening techniques.

All the time I see gardeners planting long rows with a massive 3 foot gap between each row. However, this method requires far, far more time than necessary. Why? The answer is digging and weeding.

It’s not that most people are too lazy to tend to their gardens, but that they have so much going on in their lives already to have the time or energy for growing vegetables. Often it’s only when the kids have left home that parents finally have the time to grow vegetables – which is a shame as there is a fantastic short cut to all this hard work…. raised bed gardens.

So why isn’t there a raised vegetable garden in every backyard? Because of tradition. It’s the way it’s always been done, and not many people know the secrets of raised beds.

Planting in lines has been done for generations and generations, going right back to the agricultural revolution. This layout was first conceived to allow ploughs to be dragged over fields, and a scaled down version was adopted by gardeners. The problem is that for small spaces, this is really not that efficient in terms of both the space usage and the amount of time needed to prepare and maintain the garden.

Digging of the soil is a job that puts millions off growing their own vegetables in their home. As if that weren’t reason enough, there’s also the exhausting weeding too. But with a raised vegetable garden, you can avoid these problems completely because the plants are so tightly packed that the weeds are shaded out.

As there aren’t any pathways in between the rows, you can fit around 4 times as many crops per square foot on average. This means you can have a much more compact growing area, leaving space for sheds, patios, etc.

There are other advantages of raised vegetable gardens such as needing 80% less water, and being able to grow on bad soil, or any surface for that matter. Yet, the best reason for making a raised bed is the amount of time it saves. I am not kidding when I say that you can save 90% your time spent gardening. Instead or an hour a day – you only need to spend a few minutes a day.

Please click for more information on raised vegetable garden tips.

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Growing a garden filled with plants and flowers is a true pleasure . You take care of them, watch over them and get to see them blossom into their edible pleasure.

But sometimes it gets tricky. One of the earliest things to look for should be the acidity or alkalinity of your garden by using a soil pH meter.

Why Test Your Soil pH?

The health of your plants is highly dependent on the pH balance of the area in which they are planted. It is correct that the majority of plants like a neutral pH (which is around 7) but others, like blueberries love more acid soil. Monitoring carefully the pH of the soil is important because:

• It can help you determine what to plant in your garden
• Or whether or not you need to adjust the pH of your garden to grow what you want
• Certain plant diseases like it at different pH levels
• The pH level affects the availability of nutrients to your plants

What Can You Do If Soil pH Is Not What You Want?

There are a couple of quick fixes that a gardener of any experience can do. If you find that you soil is too acid, you can incorporate lime to your soil to increase the pH, or use wood ash from your log burner (also known as potash fertilizer). If you find that your soil is too alkaline, compost of manure can be used to bring the pH more neutral.

Remember though that changing the acidity of your soil is a process that takes time. It is advisable to test and align the pH of your soil either in the fall or early spring.

Though it may seem like such a trivial thing, you may find that just by simply testing your garden using soil pH test kits and adjusting it accordingly, that your flower blooms grow larger and more vibrant and that the fruits of your garden also become larger and taste better.

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How Does Composting Work?

It is the breakdown of tissues and compounds into simpler substances, which act as soil nutrients.
Put a pile of leaves, a cardboard box and a watermelon in your back yard, exposed to the elements, and they will eventually decompose.

How long each takes to break down depends on a number of factors:
o What are the materials made of
o How much surface area is exposed
o The availability of moisture and air

Organic Materials

Backyard composting is a process designed to speed up the breakdown or decomposing of organic materials. Let us take a closer look at how we manipulate the process and speed things up.

Here I use the term microbes, which include microscopic organisms and worms amongst a whole slew of “things.” Microbes live in the soil; they are the key to composting. Normally, they eat small tidbits of organic matter such as leaves and twigs that nature provides. The more these microbes have to eat the more efficient they can work. A lot of the things you call waste – for example, banana peels, rotten apples, brown wilted lettuce, fallen leaves and weeds from your garden – are food for these microbes. Meat products should not be used.

Nitrogen Inside Foods

• If a compost pile or compost bin smells it is because of meat products. They will eventually break down, but meat slows down the composting process. Microbes need carbon and nitrogen.
• Some things high in carbon include paper, sawdust, wood chips, straw, and leaves.
• Some things high in nitrogen include food, grass clippings, and manures. Be sure to include a mixture of wastes high in nitrogen in your compost pile. The smaller the chunks are the faster they will break down. So cut up that apple. Break up those twigs, your compost pile will reward you for your effort.

Surface Microorganisms

The more surface area the microorganisms have to work on, the faster the materials will decompose. It is like a block of ice in the sun: slow to melt when it is large, but melting very quickly when broken into smaller pieces. Chopping your garden wastes with a shovel or a machete, or running them through a shredding machine or lawnmower will increase their surface area, thus speeding up your composting

• Sufficient air in the pile encourages microbial growth and speeds decomposition. We have all had the experience of smelling a mass of wet grass clippings

Ability For Air To Get Inside

Be sure your compost container had holes to allow air to get into the compost pile. These microbes need air to survive. If possible, stir or turn your compost pile every week or so to let in more air. If you do not get enough air into your compost pile, other organisms take over and give off a nasty. They also work a lot slower. I think you would prefer in your compost pile! Also, wet your compost pile. Your compost pile should be about as moist as a sponge that has just been wrung out. If there is not much rainfall, add water to your compost pile.

Air Temperature Inside Compost Bin

Compost piles should range in temperatures of about 90 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit or 32 to 60 degrees Celsius. Higher temperatures produce will kill major disease organisms and fly larvae, help kill weed seeds, and provide a good environment for the most effective decomposer organisms If the temperature is too low in your compost pile, many of your microbes will die, and those other microorganisms will take over. You know the slow smelly ones.

How Heating Affects Creating Soil Compost

The plant matter will require heat and moisture for quick breakdown. The summer sun will provide the heat, but it will be the gardener’s responsibility to soak the compost area from time to time for the moisture.

Size Of Compost Pile

If your compost pile is too small, it will be cold. The best way to keep it warm is to build a pile at least three feet x three feet x three feet (one meter x one meter x one meter).
Extremes of sun, wind, or rain can adversely affect this balance in your pile.

Understanding For Effective Composting

Understanding these key factors when composting allows for efficient, quick break down of kitchen and yard wastes, turning them into “Black Gold”!

Conclusion: If you supply all these things – food, air, and moisture in a good-sized pile – You will get your compost in about six weeks. The larger the pile the longer it will take. A poorly attended compost pile can take years to decompose.

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Why build compost piles?

A compost pile will help you refresh your garden as well as allowing you to reduce the rate of garbage that you put into the landfills. By taking just a little bit of time out of your day, you can ensure that you never run out of fertilizer and that you are doing your part to help the environment. Even better, when you start looking into it, you will find that a compost pile is much easier to put together than you might think, even easier than building a other composting supplies!

How To Start Building A Compost Pile

Start by choosing a site for your compost that is near to both your kitchen and your yard. Some exposure to the sun is handy, but make sure that it does not get too much light, as this can dry it out. Some people recommend putting your compost pile in the shade of a tree, with a base of concrete or brick to make sure that that tree is not the only one getting the nutrients. Though it is not necessary, a plastic bin can keep your compost contained and looking neater. You can even create a “corral” for your compost pile using stiff wire mesh. Though the bin can be open on the sides, you will find that a roof is necessary to keep off the rain and to keep the compost from getting flooded.

• Green compost materials are materials that are rich in nitrogen, and they include things like grass cuttings, raw vegetable peelings, tea bags, manure from horses or cows or young weeds without seeds.

Get familiar with green compost materials and brown compost materials.

• They will decompose very quickly. Brown compost materials, on the other hand, are rich in carbon and will decompose much more slowly.
• Some material that are good for brown compost include cardboard, paper, bedding from vegetarian pets, or even sawdust and wood chips.
• When you go to combine these materials, you are essentially looking for a combination of one part green to two parts brown compost.

Combining Green and Brown Compost Together

1. To get started, start throwing in one shovel of green compost, top it off with two shovels of brown compost and then mix them.
2. Repeat until you have a pile that is roughly three feet high, by three feet wide, by three feet long. A composting pile of this size generates enough heat to break down fairly quickly.
3. Finally, throw on some finished soil compost or some garden soil to help get things going.

Make sure that you water your compost regularly;

It should feel like a damp sponge or a wrung out rag. It should also be turned once a week to keep it loose. Within about two months, you are going to have humus, which is the result from the decomposition, and this is going to be perfect for your garden!

• Take a moment to think about your garden and the waste that you create that can go into a compost pile. This is a great addition to any green-minded gardener’s garden, so see what it can do for you!

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Winter time can be an opponent to a gardener or peasant of Vegetables. It does so because Vegetables need much exposure of sunshine to grow and they can be rotten easily in such season. However, today you could practice early vegetable garden planting in overcoming the problem. By practising the vegetable garden planting, you don’t need the stopping of winter time only to start growing your tasty and fresh veggie garden.

Maybe the growing season in a specific area is shorter or a gardener wish to stagger crops so that he has fresh products to enjoy from early summer until late fall. Whatever the objection might be for early vegetable garden planting, you can achieve your reason by starting to grow seeds indoors.

What to Grow in Vegetable Garden Planting?

While the snowflakes is still on the ground you can start almost any sort of crop indoors for vegetable garden planting. Warm weather crops that need a longer growing season will do better if they are started early indoors.

Winter season crops need to be mature before the summer comes, which also makes them good candidates for indoor growing. When hesitated about whether to start a crop in this manner, you can either discuss it to your local nursery or extension office or just get a pack of seeds and give it a stimulus. It doesn’t take much buck or time to try out this way of early vegetable garden planting.

Where to Grow in Vegetable Garden Planting?

In your early indoor vegetable garden planting, one of the most relevant things is the exposure of sunshine. In consequence, what you need is sunny window. The exposure of the sunshine is really needed for small seedlings to grow well.

If you notice that your seedlings are becoming awfully long and spindly, it maybe shows that they are not getting sufficient natural light. In this case, you can also consider of supplementing it with fluorescent lighting designed for this early vegetable garden planting.

How to Grow in Vegetable Garden Planting?

You have several selections for your early vegetable garden planting in terms of the sorts of soil and containers that you utilize. The most up to date trend for lots of home gardeners is to begin seeds in trays of peat pellets. These pellets will grow when you add water to them. Then you can locate your seeds right into them.

The way is by far the least difficult technique to start early vegetable garden planting. However, it can also be one of the pricier two parts loam to one part sand and one part organic substance, and mix it together in a wheelbarrow. Fill your pots and put your seeds. Now your early vegetable garden planting is complete.

Finally, remember to water your seedlings until they need to be brought outside in spring season. In consequence, we can see that early indoor vegetable garden planting can be an alternative of getting fresh and good veggies all the time along. As a result, for the vegetarians, eating Vegetables all the time is not a problem again.

Are you still at sea of knowing more about vegetable garden planting? Just look around and click the links your best answer herein! By: Millard Gordon

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If your like most gardening enthusiast that I know, you like a wide wide variety of plants. What if you locate you’ve locations of ground that just will not have the drainage needed for some plants? The answer is a raised garden bed.

Fresh, bright red and juicy strawberries are generally employed as dessert toppings and decorations because they make any food appear visually sweeter and mouth-watering. No wonder why lots of people really like strawberries. But did you know that you can develop strawberries as part of your home? And for those interested in organic and natural container gardening, strawberries are truly one of many least difficult fruit-bearing crops to develop in pots. As extended as all their growing needs are met, strawberries can thrive properly in any potted environment.

One: Choose the assortment that suits your climate. There are two main forms of strawberries – seasonal and ever-bearing. Seasonal range bear fruits while in May-June whilst Ever-bearing develop crops twice a year, a single early in summer time and yet another late in summer. If you reside in colder regions, you are much more appropriate to develop the seasonal wide variety due to the fact ever-bearing strawberries will not thrive nicely in cold weather.

If you wish to test your earth just dig a hole inside the preferred garden plot some say 10 inched deep but I go with a 2×2x2 foot hole that is two feet square. Fill the hole with h2o above night then fill it once again in the morning should you have h2o standing by afternoon you must consider raised flower beds. Raised flower beds let you fit from the sub-strata to make it possible for great drainage. I had an region of solid clay by my home and so I assemble a raised flower bed from railroad ties. I planted strawberries and got many years of wonderful harvest from them.

The only factor I would do differently is build with cement as opposed to railroad ties. In the Northwest, even treated wood breaks down and rots in 4-5 years.

Strawberries don’t like to sit in soggy soil so excellent drainage is important. You containers must be a minimum of 8-10 inches deep.

One strategy to develop a raised bed with less expense and labour is always to simply tier you garden. Create a modest bed, by adding about four inches of crushed rock then about six inches of prime earth and compost.This will raise it above the rest in the yard by about a cinder brick in height, you’ll have to make a decision what material you’re make use of for a boarder. The added rock will boost your drainage and need to enable you to plant individuals facilities which require better drainage.

If you might have grass exactly where you want the bed to be, dig out the sod to use elsewhere. If you make a decision to move the sod you must set down a plant barrier previous to refilling the hole left by the sod. So there is some advantage to moving the sod.

You can also add fertilizers towards the starting soil. When transplanting a young seedling, include enough soil such that the roots are covered as well as the bottom leaves are degree using the leading in the soil. But also, make certain that you simply leave at the least 1 to 1 1/2 inch room in between the rim on the pot along with the leading of the soil.

Four: Strawberries like it warm so give them daily doses of sunlight, generating certain that you turn the plant close to on a regular basis to expose all sides evenly.

Water only when the top ½ inch in the earth feels dry for the touch.

You can also research more essays on my site about Growing Strawberries In Containers and Growing Strawberries In Pots.

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OK, you’d like huge, showy plants which will mature mutually to form an outstanding show within your yard. There are two ways of achieving this. The first would be to give food to the plants with one of many proprietry chemical substance feeds that promote a miracle plant growth having plants 10 times bigger than regular and a lot of large flowers.

This may probably do the job- for the short term. Sadly, after a comparatively short time, the plant will have expended all its vigor and die. Not the best display possible! It may also be problematic to grow other plants at that place without additional treatments of chemical feed. A costly plan to buy addicted to, and also time intensive. Furthermore, in the event you spill the feed onto the foilage of your plant, it looks terrible.

The second method would be to give food to the earth as opposed to the plant. It is neither as simple or as fast to give results, nonetheless, it will be definitely much better for the surroundings and in the long run provide you with improved, more robust plants. This is applicable to fruit and vegetables along with flowers.

Most plant life, no matter whether ornamental or cullinary, trees, bushes or plants need the same standard wants for development. Good fertile soil, water and light. The amount of lighting and also the types of nutrients change from plant to plant but the essentials are similar. We furthermore need tiny insects to polinate flowers to produce fruit and veg. So in order to create best conditions and create great plants we ought to know very well what the plant wants and provide it.

First test out the earth. Use a meter to check whether it is alkaline or acid. That impacts what type of plants you’ll be able to develop. There isn’t any point in trying to grow plants such as azaleas in soil that is alkaline, and although is is realively elementary to provide lime to soil to deminish its acidity, is quite a bit more difficult to remove it. Manage your land not against it. In case you really must grow a plant not suitable for your soil, raise it inside a pot, although you should definitely feed and water it frequently.

Check the fertility of your soil. You can get tools that will inform you of the equilibrium of the nutritional requirements in your earth. After that look at it. Will it get water logged anytime you have heavy rainfall, or would it be well drained. Last but not least, look at your yard throughout the day. Where is it constantly sun – drenched, where is it partially shady and where is it frequently in shade. Different plants prefer differant quantities of sunlight. After you have got the answers to each of inquiries, you are able to grow your plants to their entire potential with very little expenditure.

Before you plant, completely prepare the soil. Dig it over to aerate it and do away with any weeds and add fertiliser, whether in the form of compost or slow release proprietry fertiliser for instance blood, fish and bonemeal, or growmore. After that finally put your plants in. Look carefully at your plants and pick them to suit the situation. Theres no point in placing flowers which require full sunlight alongside a wall that may shade them. Equally there’s very little profit in putting shade loving plants in full sunshine, they’re going to just burn and die. The whole purpose of looking after your backyard is to get a great show.

When you feed your soil rather than your plants, you are going to grow better, healthier plants that will produce large flowers over a long period of time without any intervention on your part. They will be more able to resist deseases and deter assaults by predators such as aphids and if they are perennials, will be more able to survive their dormant phase and return another twelve months looking strong and ready to give you more pleasure, for not much additional expense or effort. And remember, to get really good results you should always start off with reliable seeds and plants.

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I was wondering about conditioning my garden soil?

Would it suffice for me to top dress a bed with soil conditioner or compost. Or, would it work if I took a shovel and pushed it into the ground and opened a slit, and then put some soil conditioner or compost into the slit? It wouldn’t be the same as working it into the entire soil bed, but at least there would be a little organic material in there.

Your Answer. I was just reading about this type of renovation to a garden bed. The writer was explaining that it is good to replenish organic matter every two years and one did not have to tear up the entire plot, but could incorporate it with digging down a foot or two, without disturbing the root systems of the existing plants. Fertilizer can be applied throughout the summer and this is called side dressing. Top dressing is merely laying organic matter on the surface. It will be beneficial, but will take much more time for the nutrients to reach down via leaching into the roots.

If there are no plants in this bed, you may dig all through it and add organic material, such as compost, dried leaves, peat moss or leaf mold. If plants are growing there now, then carefully dig away from the plants and add. Assume that the root systems will extend at least as far as the reach of the plant branches.

Here are some items to purchase and spade in. Read on with descriptions and several websites with lots of info for you, too much to print here!

• Perlite
• Vermiculite
• Dolomite Lime
• Magnesium Sulfate
• Seaweed Meal
• Soil Moist

http://dmoz.org/Home/Gardens/Soil_and_Additives/Fertilizers

This is one thing I just harp upon:

Soil drainage is critical to survival and growth of most landscape plants, especially evergreen trees and shrubs. When the rate of water movement through soil is restricted by fine-textured clay soils, subsoil, hard pan, or other material difficult to penetrate, a saturated zone may develop in the root zone of plants. Spaces in the soil normally containing air are filled with water, resulting in saturated soil. Wet soils cause more problems to landscape crops than any other single cause. When drainage is poor, roots are injured from the lack of oxygen, fertilizer uptake is limited, and plant growth is reduced. Soil moisture problems can be solved by installing surface and/or internal drainage.

http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~ohioline/hyg-fact/1000/1002.html

Building Fertile Soil

Healthy soil = healthy plants: when you build and maintain fertile soil rich in organic matter, you literally lay the groundwork for thriving plants that can develop quickly, resist pests and diseases, and yield a bountiful crop.

http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs/gardenideas/soilfert.html

The ideal soil would have sand, silt, clay and organic matter in about equal amounts. It would also be uniformly mixed to at least twelve inches deep. The subsoil would allow the excess water to drain away. No soil is ideal but soil can be improved with soil amendments and drainage.

Amendments that are commonly added to soil are:

• Sand or Profile Soil Conditioner: to improve aeration and drainage.
• Compost: to add organic matter, nutrients and to improve aeration and drainage.
• Lime or Sulfur: to raise or lower pH.
• Fertilizers: to add specific nutrients.
• Sharp sand or Mason’s sand creates spaces much better than river sand

http://www.rodsgarden.50megs.com/improvingsoil.htm

http://www.discountgarden.com/soiladditives.html

http://www.scdhec.net/recycle/html/compost.html

http://www.dinosoil.com

This was a first garden in this house. We have raised beds and had special soil called 4-way garden soil brought in. We tested the soil and had to add a bit to it to reach where we wanted it to be.

We had hail in June and it did stunt some of the growing, but we got a fair amount of produce. Our tomatoes had no real flavor. We planted Roma, Early Girl and Sweet 100’s. All were rather tasteless.

Our green peppers tasted good as did the carrots, radish, cauliflower, broccoli.

The watermelons and cantaloupe did not have much taste either. We got a lot of melons, just no flavor. What could it be?

We had no pests and no weeds to speak of either. Did we water too much? We did not fertilize since the soil was good. We had a lot of ladybugs.

Response. It is a hard call, as reading soil test results would assist. Take in some samples next spring as soon as you can dig, from a depth of 6-12″, in various locations, labeled, to your local Ag Inspection lab or Extension Service [even a nearby school or research facility for farmers and gardeners.]

The lack of added fertilizer is suspect. Even if the newly added soil was fine, with many spring and summer rains and hand waterings, the food leaches down below the root systems so is not available to the plants as they produce fruit and vegetables. This can lead to bland, tasteless food.

The hail and ladybugs would have no effect on flavor. Overwatering would lead to root, stem and blossom rot, and melons need plentiful water, so this also is not a factor. The soil and fertilizer are the issues which need to be analyzed next spring.

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