Starting A Vegetable Garden
Tips For Creating A Vegetable Garden
There is nothing like the satisfaction to be gained, not to mention the money saved, from growing fresh vegetables in your garden. By following a few of our gardening tips, you could turn a part of your garden into a healthy food making machine.
Choosing Your Garden's Location
Depending on the size of your gardens you may or may not have options as to the perfect location. Nonetheless, try to select a clear (away from trees) well drained yet not too dry, stone free and sunny spot as you can. Consider starting a small garden to begin with but leave yourself the option to extend the gardens later.
Your subsoil is important too; avoid rock, gravel, sand, or hardpan. An area of around 500 square feet is good to start with. You will soon discover if this garden is a manageable size for you and can adjust accordingly. Choosing the proper garden fencing is important to keeping unwelcome animal visitors out of your vegetables.
Great Soil, Great Veggies
This is the base of all of your endeavors, you need good fertile gardening soil that is right for the vegetables that to want to grow in your garden. Research the varieties that you want to plant and their ideal growing conditions.
Prepare your soil by digging it over to a depth of around 18” and till it. Southern States has a great selection of gardening tools & supplies to help you along the way. If you are in any doubt as to its pH get a dry sample of your soil tested and adjust its pH using sulfur or lime. If this area of your garden has been cultivated before then you shouldn’t need to worry about fertilizer too much for the first crop. However, if this is a newly cultivated area of your garden you should consider applying compost, organic matter or a dressing of another garden fertilizer.
Get your gardening soil tested at your local Southern States, where you can talk to vegetable gardening expert and get advice for growing great veggies this year.
Develop Your Vegetable Gardening Plan
Decide on what you would like and check to see if they are a good fit with a climate hardiness zone map for your area. Draw a diagram, with the rows of the vegetables that you want to grow in your garden and note their growth heights, requirements, and characteristics. For your assistance, use our Printable Gardening Grid.
A common gardening tip is to try and establish your rows running east to west thus allowing you to establish your taller plants to the north of your vegetable garden and progressing south with shorter growing varieties. This will help prevent taller plants shading out shorter ones. You are ready to plant.
Utilize our Vegetable Planting Chart to determine seed amount, planting months, and information on planting distances for the vegetables you want to grow.
Check out our How-To Garden Section to learn more, like how to start your vegetable seeds indoors.