Planning a Vegetable Garden? What you Need to Know

Planning a Vegetable Garden? What you Need to Know

If you?ve always wanted to grow your own vegetables but have felt the task was too much for you, take heart?planning and growing vegetables is a lot easier than you may think. With a little judicious strategic planning, you can plant a vegetable garden that will provide ample supplies for you, your family and maybe even your entire neighborhood as well!

For best results, however, there are some pointers you need to keep firmly in mind, including these:

Plant fast growing vegetables like green onions next to slower growing veggies like cauliflower to get maximum use from minimum garden space.

Plant in wide rows rather than skinny single file ones; this will be easier to do if you plant smaller beds that are accessible from every side; you?ll get bigger harvests this way, especially from leafy greens like spinach, lettuce and legumes like peas and beans.
Position your vegetable garden so it receives at least six hours of direct sunlight per day; if you only have partial shade, stick to planting leaf crops like lettuces, spinach, and chard and buy sun-loving veggies like tomatoes and melons at your local produce market.
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Garden Tip...

The spring is preferable to the fall for setting out trees and shrubs of all kinds. In the Northern States they should be set out about the first of April, to give the roots time enough to become established before warm weather starts the leaves.
~ James Sheehan
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Make soil super nourished by enriching it generously with well-rotted manure, sphagnum peat moss, compost, leaf mold or other organic matter; if your soil is heavy clay, be sure to mix in extra humus and sand to make it lighter and easier to aerate.

View tending your garden as a happy, joyful activity, not as a boring dutiful one.
Lighten your garden chore load by mulching heavily in early summer to retain moisture and discourage weeds, using shredded bark, compost, cocoa bean hulls, straw or rain-spoiled hay.

Think vertically: grow crops such as pole beans, cucumbers and melons on trellises to conserve land space.

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Garden Tip...

Always water your plants in winter time with lukewarm water, if you would have a profusion of flowers, and thrifty-growing plants. The water should be of the same temperature as the room or place where the plants are. There is no theory about it, it is a practical fact.
~ James Sheehan
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Install a drip irrigation system to save water and reduce the number of times you?ll need to water; adding a timer to your system will enable you to water your vegetable plants automatically, even when you?re away from home.

Plant spring/summer and fall/winter vegetable gardens to maximize garden output, and always plant those vegetables you and your family and friends love and will enjoy eating. Why plant things nobody you cook for likes? Put your energies into cultivating your favorites and develop some new recipes to showcase your rich harvest!

Not every gardener is a flower gardener. Many of us derive great pleasure from planting, tending and then enjoying the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors from an edible garden. Especially for a larger family who needs to make the budget stretch a little farther and has a little land to spare, vegetable gardening can be a wonderful pastime that the whole family can help with.