Tips to Plant a Vegetable Garden

Sunday, November 21st, 2010 at 8:09 am  
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Moestuin in september (vegetable garden)

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I was looking through EzineArticles.com today, looking for a few good articles about vegetable gardening and found this article. I thought you would like it. We are already discovering benefits from having our own vegetable garden.

There are lots of benefits you can get from having your own vegetable garden. You’re more safe with the food you eat, because you’re the one planting them and you can see the growth process of your plants everyday. From planting to harvesting, you’re all there morning and afternoon until you reap your sacrifices and see what you’ve endeavored.

There’s no substitute of overwhelming joy you’ll feel when you see your yummy tomatoes, lush green lettuce, red sweet pepper, and other plants in your garden growing healthy bearing fruits and dark green leaves.

What a magnificent feeling you can imagine when you’re in your garden looking at your plants greeting you with their vigorous growth formation.

I have enumerated some simple tips you can follow for your vegetable garden.

  1. Planting Area. At least you’ve a space in your home to plant. I mean, any available space can be utilized for planting. You can use your pathways, windowsill, garage, anyplace whatsoever.
  2. Available Time. Gardening needs your time, not that you’ll devote all your efforts there. If you can utilize at least 1 -2 hours a day, that’s enough to have your garden up and running.
  3. Security. Security here, means that your garden should be free from outside encroachment; like astray animals, and other invaders. Your garden should be fenced if possible to avoid trouble later on.
  4. Public Relation. As a home gardener, you should always be on top of the situation to be in good terms with your neighbors and other people in your community. Based on my experience, my garden is just along the roadside surrounded with lots of bystanders especially during the night. But, I’m glad that my plants are safe and no one dares to steal. My formula is this, during my harvest, I give to my neighbors and anyone who ask, I always give them. That’s my secret.
  5. Available Planting Materials. Now a days, you don’t need to worry where to get your planting materials. There are lots of agriculture stores who sells all your vegetables seeds. You can select whether you want a hybrid or an open pollinated seeds. Select the hybrid seeds if you want an early maturing fruits disease-free or an open pollinated for long season crops.
  6. Climate. Vegetables grows in different sets of climatic conditions. You should be familiar with growth pattern of some common vegetables. Some tolerates summer, others during winters, falls and springs. Seek advice from your agriculture extension agents what plant grows well in this particular conditions.
  7. Water Requirements. Water is the lifeblood of all living things. Vegetables responses well with enough supply of water. Make it your priority to provide a continuous supply of water in your vegetable garden.

There are lots more you can incorporate here, but I only narrow it down to these 7 tips as the most important ones for you to start your vegetable gardening.

Happy gardening!

Cris Ramasasa, Freelance writer, writes about home gardening and Internet marketing tips. You can get a copy of his latest ebook “Discover How to get started in Flower Gardening” and “Vegetable Gardening Made Easy”, also get lots of tips, Free articles, and bonuses at: http://www.crisramasasa.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Crisologo_Ramasasa

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Planning Your First Vegetable Garden

Sunday, October 17th, 2010 at 6:35 am  
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Vegetable garden at Ham House Estate. In the t...
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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.

  1. We wanted each plant to get as much sun as possible.
  2. Our garden is on a slight incline so we planted the rows so that the rain would not erode the garden.

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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Top 5 Reasons To Grow Your Own Vegetable Garden

Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 5:59 am  
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Organic cultivation of mixed vegetables in Cap...
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Although many people like the idea of being self sustained and committing to growing your own vegetables, they think that it is a very hard process to carry out.

The truth is although you might need to spend a large amount of time setting things up at the beginning, the daily maintenance of your crop really doesn’t take too long.  Often the other concern is the amount of space that growing vegetables can take up but there are a number of ways around this.  Applying for a local council allotment could be one solution and there are a number of space saving raised garden beds available on the market to fit into the smallest of gardens.  If you are thinking of growing your own vegetables then take a look at some of the best reasons to start planting seeds in your garden.

1. For The Fresh Organic Taste - You can’t beat the taste of fresh, organically grown vegetables.  Vegetables bought from a shop have often been transported over long distances before they even make it in to a shop.  This means that you rarely get to taste them when they are truly fresh and a lot of the flavour is lost.
2. To Avoid The Use Of Unknown Pesticides – It is hard for any company to guarantee that no pesticides or other chemicals have been used on the plants and soil the vegetables are grown in.  Obviously pesticides are useful for protecting crops from being destroyed by pests and disease but it is unclear as to how much they effect the taste of your food.  You can control what you put on your crops to make sure you know exactly what you are getting.
3. To Encourage Your Children To Eat More Healthy – Encouraging children to try new vegetables can typically be a challenge.  Getting your children involved with the process of growing fruit and vegetables will get them more interested in tasting different types of food they have helped to grow.  This is a great way to help promote healthy eating in your children from a young age.
4. For The Health Benefits – Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables every day is a great way to get everything you need to keep yourself healthy.  You will often find that people who grow their own vegetables will tend to eat more of them, more often.  There is also the added benefit that digging the garden and spending the time outside will be good exercise and will help to increase your fitness.


5. Reduce Your Supermarket Bill - One thing that is obvious is that by planting vegetables you will save money on your food shopping.  Supermarkets tend to have special offers on packs of carrots and other veg, which often means you buy more than you need.  The problem with this is that vegetables often have a short shelf life so they often end up being thrown away before you have a chance to use them.  Therefore growing your own will help you to avoid wasteful spending.

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