Vegetable gardening is a wonderful way to feed your family safe and healthy food at a fraction of the cost. Most Americans spend just 2-5 hours per week cultivating their gardens with their gardening tools and, in the end, they wind up saving $500 in food!
With just $70, you can begin home vegetable gardening, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, peppers and more! Here is everything you need to know to get started, from picking a spot, to making raised beds, to cultivating the ground and choosing your planting patterns.
The first step in starting a vegetable garden is choosing the right size and location. First, be sure your location is very, very sunny. Most vegetables need a good six to eight hours of direct sunlight each day for the best results.
If you have a shadier area, you can stick your spinach and lettuce there. As you assess your yard, be sure to take into account the shade cast by the deciduous trees and the house during certain times of the day.
Ideally, the garden will be conveniently situated near the kitchen, so you can tend to it more easily and harvest without hiking long distances. The best soil will be full of nutrients and drain well, so you may need to add organic compost and use garden tools to aerate the soil before you begin.
A fine gardening expert will usually tell you that raised beds are the best method for effective vegetable gardening. Garden guides love raised beds because they increase the growing area by reducing the amount of garden used for paths, they save fertilizer and compost materials, they are easy and convenient to work with, they work well with trellises, they are 12-15 degrees warmer than the ground so you can plant earlier, and they are beautiful to look at.
To begin creating your raised beds, measure and stake down each garden bed and outline the beds with string. To raise the bed, loosen the soil with a shovel or fork and nestle your bed into the plot. Smooth the soil on the surface of the bed with the tines and back edge of a rake.
Take your time when shaping the beds, for this step is very important. Each bed should rise eight inches above ground when all is said and done and the most productive raised beds are about three feet wide. 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.
Over the years, you’ll begin to fine-tune your vegetable gardening. You may find some crops do extraordinarily well, while others are a flop. You may decide to add new veggies to the mix or plant more of a certain crop that worked very well.
Once your cool season crop finishes its season (like peas), you can try planting a warm season crop (like zucchini). You may also try home vegetable gardening with a technique known as “interplanting,” which involves planting a quick-maturing crop like lettuce next to slow-growing broccoli.
The idea is that you’ll harvest all your lettuce by the time the broccoli is looking to stretch out. Rake the fertilizer into the first few inches of top soil to break up clay clumps and create a nutritious environment for growing plants.
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