Vegetable Garden

7 Vegetable Garden Tips for The Beginning Gardener

 Vegetable gardening is a cost effective, healthy and entirely rewarding pastime. But to reap the full benefits of all your efforts make sure that you note these easy-to-follow vegetable garden tips.

1. The first and possibly the most important of all vegetable garden tips is always about healthy soil.  Literally the basis of all successful vegetable gardening, you need to invest time and energy getting this right before moving on to planting, watering or fertilizing. If your soil is largely sandy or clay invest in some topsoil or compost. Compost can be made up of biodegradable material which can be brake down into a fine, dark humus. ‘Mature manure’ from animal livestock is one of the best ways of adding much needed ‘body’ to clay or sand. Add compost frequently at least in spring and in fall. And be patient. It will some years to real improve the quality of your soil.
2. Consider making a raised vegetable bed and fill this with topsoil. Use about five treated timber(2X12’s). This is a wonderful help for the back regardless of how god it feels as you read this, it is easy to plant and weed.
3. Buy seeds from the store or order them through catalogs and always buy quality seeds. The effort you devote to preparing your garden needs to be rewarded with quality plants or seeds. It is more likely that you will reap better results from the best quality seeds or plants.
4. Start with crops that are grow without too much help from you. Try beets, onions and peas. Make sure that plants like tomatoes, beans and squash are planted after the season’s frosts have passed.
5. Protect your garden from small creatures of the four and two legged varieties with a wire mesh fence! Space your vegetables correctly to diminish the impact of insects and select environmentally friendly insecticide to help control this.
6. Use granular fertilizers just prior to planting and then water soluble fertilizer to provide all the nutrients that new plants need.
7. Find an experienced gardener with whom you solve unexpected problems, make more ambitious plans and celebrate your successes. Vegetable gardening is very much a ‘hands on’ experience where you will benefit enormously from a friend or neighbor who has trodden the garden path before you and is happy to share his or her vegetable garden tips with a ‘newbie’.

In tough times like those we are experiencing now, enjoy the many benefits of your vegies at harvest time. Eat them fresh and crisp or slightly steamed or stir fried and savor the flavor of very your own vegetab

 

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