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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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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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I see more and more people today turning to vegetable gardening as a means to save money and have organically grown vegetables. The labour you put into your vegetable garden will produce healthier and less expensive vegetables for your table.

We started vegetable gardening a few years ago. We didn’t save a whole lot of money the first couple of years as we started small but had to buy garden tools to make the tasks easier. After the first couple of years we increase our garden to a 16 foot by 4 foot veggie garden and once the gardening was done for this year I increase it a bit so now it’s more like 16×8 and come next spring I may just increase it by another 4 feet wider.

Home Grown Vegetables Just Taste Better

We tend to get used to buying vegetables and perhaps don’t pay enough attention to organically grown. I get bad headaches, to the point of migraines. It took me many years of suffering before I finally put it together. I was being affected by the poisons on the vegetables and fruits we purchase. Not any more though.

Our veggie garden isn’t big enough to provide all year long so we do buy vegetables but now we wash everything with special soap. By the way, I have not had any migraines since we started washing our vegetables.

Where To Plant Your Vegetable Garden

We started growing vegetable in containers so finding a location in the sun was easy because we just moved them if they didn’t seem to get enough. Once we decided on an in-ground vegetable garden we had to find the best spot to start it. One that had good drainage, although we modified the soil to fix that little problem, and also a lot of sun over the summer.

We live in the centre of Moncton so we don’t see too many wild animals in our garden, unless you are referring to our son. Okay that was a joke, sorry buddy. But seriously, we don’t get any deer or rabbits, but we do have to deal with neighbourhood cats.

The Need For Good Topsoil

Before we started planting anything in our garden we dug it up to about a foot deep and then ammended the soil with peatmoss and topsoils. This was because our soil is heavy dense clay that grows little more than ugly weeds.

Adding organic matter to the soil releases nitrogen, minerals, and other nutrients plants need to survive. The most popular and best type of mulch you can use is compost.

We have a compost bin that allows us to recycle our kitchen and yard waste giving us great top soil for our vegetable garden while cutting back on what we put into the landfill.

Planting Your Vegetable Garden

I have already mentioned the need for lots of sunlight. So you have a plot picked out and prepared. Now it’s time to plan your planting and that means making sure your vegetables get enough of that available sunlight by planting the tallest vegetables to the east end of the garden.

Your tall plants will get early sunlight but will not block your other veggies once the sun moves past high noon and starts heading west. I managed to get this in reverse my first year, as a result we didn’t get a huge harvest, but a great learning experience.

When To Plant Your Veggies

You have now done all your home work and preparation. The next important step is to be ready to plant at the right time and that’s going to depend on whether you start from seeds or plants that are already started.

We usually don’t plant here in New Brunswick Canada until the threat of frost has past which is usually early June.

I will plant things ahead of time so that we have starter plants for those veggies that require longer growing periods but for things like lettuce, radishes, carrots and potatoes to mention a few we plant directly in the garden.

We do plant some veggies a little earlier than we should but if there is a call for low temperatures we cover the areas of the garden that need protection from frost.

Vegetable gardening started out as an interest and way to get healthier produce but today, a few years later it’s now become a hobby and we look forward to it each year.

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Planning Organic Vegetable Gardening in New Brunswick

Have desire to grow your own vegetable garden? We went for many years before we were in a situation where we could have our own vegetable garden and now we do and I just double the size from last year.

Learning a few things about vegetable gardening will make the task more enjoyable, to the point where it may well become your favourite hobbies.

Follow a few steps before you plant anything and you will have a healthier vegetable garden with less work.

Steps To Planting Your First Garden

1. Location, Location, Location

Location is important. You need sunlight and good drainage. These are two vital components to a good veggie garden. Anything else you need for your garden can be added.

Steer clear of trees if possible as their roots can rob nutrients from the soil and in the summer their branches can over shade your garden, blocking that vital sunlight. Like our first vegetable garden.

2. Preparing The Soil

Our vegetable garden used to be part of our lawn and the soil beneath the turf was very dense clay that wouldn’t drain for days after a heavy rain. But we wanted a vegetable garden so that didn’t stop us.

First we removed the sod with as little dirt as possible. We even let it dry in the yard so we could pound the excess dirt off it.

Next I dug the entire plot to about a foot deep and mixed in fresh topsoil we have from composting and also added a few bags of peatmoss to help break the soil into something workable.

We tested the garden once we had added the compost and peatmoss to see how well it drained and found we had improved it considerable. So now it drains in hours instead of days.

3. Know Your Local Planting Zones

There are a lot of vegetables one can grow but you need to decide what you like the most, making sure it will grow in your growing zone. For this you can look up the growing zones for where you live.

We live in New Brunswick Canada so we looked that up along with the phrase ‘growing zone’ or ‘vegetable growing zone’.

Note: We decided we wanted to grow a few things that needed a longer growing periods, so I started those inside a couple of months early so they were well started before planting them outside.

4. How to Maintain Your Vegetable Garden

A vegetable garden doesn’t maintain itself very well and will soon be taken over by weeds if not watched. Keep a head of the weeds and it becomes rather easy to maintain. On the other hand leave it for a week or two and you may start to see the vegetable plants start to suffer.

We have our rows of vegetables running north to south for a couple of reasons.

I mentioned this but it’s important so I will mention it again. Your vegetable garden must drain well or your veggie roots will drown the plants.

We added compost and peatmoss but we also set the rows so the water would drain but not erode the garden.

5. Know Your Garden Pests

Take the time to learn about the pest that like what you grow so you can learn how to control pests organically.

Completing each task doesn’t take too long, especially when it’s planned. We on the other hand didn’t learn before we started our first vegetable garden. Instead I just started digging in so we ended up with a lot more work than we needed so learn from my mistakes and plan your vegetable garden before planting it and happy gardening.

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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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When you need to grow a vegetable garden in a raised bed it might be made with wood, concrete  blocks, stone or other materials which are then filled with earth. Depending on your requirements they can be anywhere from 6  inches to waist height above the ground. Common motives for creating a raised bed is for  more convenient accessibility  for people who find the bending  over movements, so familiar to  conventional gardening,  tough or not  possible to tackle.

It’s important to consider your construction materials carefully since lumber, for instance, that has been treated might permit poisonous substances to leach into the land and which lands up in the vegetables themselves. It is better to use hard wood or stones.

You should take into account how level your yard is as well. A pitched site is more challenging to work on than a level one and if it’s really steep you might get soil erosion subsequent to heavy rains. One tactic to help handle this is to set the beds crosswise to the slope.

Also, if your garden is very windy you might have to put up windbreaks. Ensure that they are permeable so the wind can pass through, otherwise they’re going to collapse or create instability and you will have to start again. They can be non-natural like a fence or a living barrier such as hedging. The latter is inclined to be more attractive but will require time to develop and will entail work to keep it in good physical shape and looking nice.

The usual shape for a raised bed vegetable garden is a simple rectangle although on occasion they may be circular with a slice removed so the centre can be reached with less effort. These are often called keyhole gardens and are especially good in locations where there’s a shortage of water. In such situations a chimney type structure may be made in the centre and packed with grass and twigs. When this is filled with water it permits it to flow more evenly into the earth, efficiently finding the roots of the vegetation planted in the raised bed.

Planting vegetables is normally done in geometric patterns and is closer than you typically find when gardening in rows straight in the ground. The closeness of the plants to each other causes a micro climate which helps to preserve moisture and keeps the weeds down. Moreover the soil does not become compressed, as there aren’t any human boots tramping on it, so the roots can grow without restraint. These dissimilarities from conventional planting frequently result in more veg being produced.

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There are many different types of gardens. Some people create backyard gardens, others build back yard gardens Well kept up gardens are pleasing visually and are often fragrant too. Herbal gardens provide fresh spices for cooking and salads.

Solutions and ideas abound for ways to build your garden. Container gardens are growing in popularity all the time. With container gardens you can often move the container around as needed to get more sunshine or more shade. Raised bed gardens make it easy to create gardens in set, confined areas. Weeding is a part of gardening. It’s often easier to weed container gardens and raised bed gardens than in ground gardens.

Often people skip the planning stage all together and just dive right into building out their garden. You can clear a plot of ground and amend the soil to create a simple garden.

Spending time creating a garden design usually gives the best results. Having a garden design really helps if you are going to a greenhouse or garden store to buy your plants. Taking care of your plants is easy if you can easily get at them. Your garden design will help you figure this out before you actually plant.

Figuring out how much sun and shade your plants need is easier with a garden layout. If you put plants that grow tall in front of shorter plants that require sun and end up blocking the short plants from the sunlight you will stunt the growth of the shorter plants.

Some plants grow well together and some do not. Those that do are called companion plants. Some plants like onions and strawberries are complementary, or companion plants. Plants like spinach and potatoes should not be planted near one another. Determining the best placement for good and bad companion plants is much easier when using a garden design.

Different varieties of seeds sprout in different amounts of time. Radishes for example germinate in as little as 4 days and can be harvested in 25 – 35 days. If you have planted radishes in a vegetable garden, what will you want to plant when you harvest your first batch?

Making a garden plan helps you answer this and many other things that will come up in the course of each garden. Using a plan will let you get a jumpstart on your garden next year.  You will be ready to plant as soon as the threat of frost is gone.

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If you’ve decided to start vegetable gardening this year, then you are among the 7 million households that are beginning their first gardening experience too. More and more Americans are looking for fresher, safer, better quality and cheaper food that can be cultivated right in their own backyards. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans and carrots are some of the most popular varieties. Before you begin, here are some gardening tips on planning, implementing and maintaining a bountiful garden.

The first thing you’ll need to do when creating a vegetable garden is picking the most suitable location and size. Firstly, make sure your location gets a lot of sunshine. Most vegetables should have around six to eight hours of direct sunlight each day for the best results. If you have a shadier location, you can place your lettuce and spinach there. As you assess your yard, make certain to take into account the shadows cast by the deciduous trees and the house throughout specific times of the day.

Ideally, the garden will be handily situated in close proximity to the kitchen, so you can tend to it with less effort and bring in your crop without walking long distances. The most satisfactory soil will be loaded with nutrients and drain properly, so you might need to add organic compost and use the right tools to aerate the earth before you start.

When choosing what goes into your garden, you’ll need to consider how much space the crops you want take up. Vegetable gardening items like corn, winter squash and tomatoes tend to take up a lot of room, so you’ll need a 20 x 20 garden at least. If you want to grow a few herbs, peppers, cucumbers and greens, a 12 x 16 plot should be sufficient. Garden guides from the National Gardening Association recommend growing plants in succession in three foot wide beds with 18-inch paths between each row. It’s also a good idea to add a few flowers (such as marigolds) into your garden to add some beauty, deter pests and attract helpful pollinating bees.

The last step before planting is to feed the soil and make it ready for productive vegetable gardening. Whatever the plants take up out of the soil, you’ll need to ensure microorganisms or soil puts back in. Several inches of compost or natural manure fertilizer usually does the trick. For a 12 x 16 (200 square-foot) garden, use about 75 pounds of commercial compost or horse manure. If you’re using uncultivated soil, the best garden advice is to apply five pounds of organic fertilizer with 5% nitrogen for every 200 square feet. Rake the fertilizer into the first few inches of top soil to break up clay clumps and create a nutritious environment for growing plants.

Eating healthfully doesn’t have to be expensive when you plant a vegetable garden. From container vegetable gardening to edible landscaping, you’ll find the information you need at the Vegetable Garden Site.

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It’s funny about giving out tips, once you know them you need to share them so others can enjoy the same success without so much trial and error. That’s why I started this vegetable gardening tips blog, to share.

Once I started gardening I found so much of the stresses in life just faded away while I was putter around in my gardens. I enjoyed it so much that I started a backyard gardening tips blog to share my experiences. Later I started vegetable gardening and found that it was a good stress release also but it also puts food on our table that is organic and we didn’t have to pay a grocery store for it.

Note: My wife and I were more than surprised at the difference our produce tasted compared to the stuff we buy at the grocery store. Our first experience was fresh strawberries andwe were speechless. Needless to say we didn’t really share any of those strawberries, maybe next year.

Once winter slammed into us I thought it was a great time to start a vegetable gardening tips blog to share what we are learning as we go because really we are still vegetable gardening newbies.

Fear Freezes So Many Potential Gardeners

We put off vegetable gardening for a long time because I just figured it was too hard and needed too much care but that was just fear of failure. Once a friend of my wife’s gave us some useful tips and advice we start and haven’t looked back.

We started in our first year planting one strawberry plant in a big pot and a couple of tomatoes in big pots as well. It was great but they soon grew out of their containers and I had to put them in the ground. They all survived although we were told to leave the strawberries without eating the fruit until the second year. By the second year that one little strawberry plant had turned into a patch of about 16ft by 3 feet and gave us so many berries.

The tomatoes just kept producing tomatoes until the fall and all the leaves were gone. It was amazing how many tomatoes we had and we did share many tomatoes.

The following year I started my first garden patch and then I was completely hooked.

I had a lot of fun learning about vegetable gardening in that first year and even started a garden recipe blog to share some of the recipes we used with our fruits and veggies throughout the summer.

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