How to Grow a Garden

Veggies can be easier to grow than other plants, such as orchids and bonsai. If planned well, planted properly, and attended to with care, your veggie garden will provide you with a bountiful harvest of fresh and healthy foods for you and your family. But before jumping into the fun of digging in the dirt and sowing your choice of vegetable seeds, there are several things you should consider in order for your veggie garden to be a success.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, the climate where you live is critical and will determine whether certain vegetables will even grow beyond a meager seedling. Especially note which seasons are best for planting and growing particular vegetables in your region. What may work for starting a garden in Pittsburgh in April may be more suitable for starting a veggie garden in Phoenix in late February due to the different climates. So definitely keep this in mind when you plan your veggie garden.

No matter where you live, veggies are usually divided into two planting categories: warm season and cool season. Warm season veggies are those such as corn, tomato, beans, peppers, cucumber and other squash varieties, melons and sweet potatoes. Cool season veggies would be carrots, lettuce, onions and peas, radish and potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, beets and turnips.

Second in your planning consideration, should be how much garden you think you will be willing to care for. You may have grandiose ideas of feeding your family year round, but such a garden would need to be quite large and require quite a bit more work than a novice gardener may want to invest themselves into, caring for such a veggie garden. Therefore, if you are new to gardening, it would probably be better worth your time to start small with a few choice vegetables that you are certain your family will consume. If no one but you will touch Brussels sprouts, it would not be wise to invest ten square feet to the plant. So remember this when deciding which vegetables to plant in your veggie garden.

The third item to consider in your veggie garden planning, is where in your yard the garden will be set up. Veggies like and require sunlight, often lots of it, so it would not be a great idea to plant your veggie garden in the shade of a giant oak tree or a long hedge or tall fence. Make note of what parts of your yard are shaded and for how long during the day. This may take a day or two of tracking the sun, note where the sun is at 8am, noon and 3pm, and either sketch it on paper or mark the edges of the shaded areas on the ground with stones or twigs – at least until you can get it mapped on paper.

Another item to consider when determining where in your yard the veggie garden will make its home, is how much wind that area gets. You may find the spot has the perfect amount of daily sunlight, but is susceptible to constant wind. If this is the case, you will need to provide some sort of wind break to avoid drying out the soil or break your tall vegetables such as corn or large tomato plants. A precisely placed garden lattice, fence or hedge can provide the protection from the wind that your veggie garden will need.

Back on the topic of sunlight, you will need to be careful about the plant height in your veggie garden. You would not want to have planned so carefully to place your garden perfectly away from shade trees and fencing, only to have your tall sweet corn cast a shadow over your poor beans! So be sure to place all of the tall plants at the north side of your veggie garden, and your shortest plants at the south end. This way you can be sure that each and every vegetable gets an adequate amount of sunshine every day.

The right amount of water is important to your veggie garden’s health. You do not want to over-water, nor do you want to deprive the vegetables. Proper drainage is essential to avoiding root rot, and the best way to achieve this is with good soil mixture created with sandy loam. To help avoid over-watering, you may want to invest in some type of drip system. These can be purchased at any home improvement or garden center and should not be too difficult to set up, and is ideal for providing the water at the best place for the vegetable plants – at their roots.

And finally, one last key item to remember when you plan your garden year after year is to rotate where you plant each type of crop, so on your veggie garden map, be sure to note where you plant each veggie so you know where NOT to plant them in the following years. Plants absorb nutrients from the soil differently, which is why rotating where you plant them is important. Many of these nutrients can be replaced with fertilizer, compost and other treatments, but it is wise to help your veggie garden in this endeavor with changing things up.

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