Starting a Vegetable Garden ~ The Basics
Whether you live in the country with plenty of room, the suburbs, with a little room to grow, or even in the middle of a large city with plenty of traffic but little room to grow you can start a vegetable garden. You just need to know the basics.
Soil is the most important thing you need to know about is the soil. Soil is where your plants will pull their nutrients, so you need to make sure it’s got something good to work with. There are three basic types of soil, sand, clay and silt. A mixture of clay and sandy soil is the best for plants, as it keeps water in, but also lets it drain. This will only matter if you are planting in the ground. If you are planting your garden in containers, or pots you will buy potting soil.
When preparing the soil for your vegetable garden, dig up the soil and break off the lumps. Take out the rocks, roots, and weeds while you’re at it. Check if you have just the right mixture of sand, silt, and clay before you begin planting vegetable gardens. Ideally, silt and sand should both be 40%, and clay should just be 20%, this is to make sure that the water isn’t trapped inside too much that the roots will choke. Also, if the water is trapped too long inside the soil, the roots will rot. One good way to test whether the composition of your soil is good is by scooping out a handful and forming a ball with it. The soil should hold the shape of a ball without too much difficulty. If the soil cannot hold the shape, you might have too much silt or sand in the mixture. If the soil holds the shape but does not crumble easily when you poke it, it might have too much clay in it which you need to balance out with a little silt or sand.
After you have tilled your soil comes the fun part. Garden planning. Now you figure out just exactly what you want to plant and where it’s going to go in the garden. You have to take into consideration just how much room you have and how big some plants will get. Squash will take up to 3 square foot of garden space for each plant. So if you are planting a small garden you want to plan accordingly.
After you’ve gotten your plants put it the ground you need to make sure you water on a regular basis. You need to make sure you give your plants enough water to soak down into the soil, and not just on the top. When you water “deep” it allows the roots to grow a big network that will take care of the plant when the heat of the summer comes. A soaker hose is a great tool for watering your vegetable garden. It provides water directly to the roots of the plant and at a slow enough rate the water can really soak into the ground.
The work involved in starting a vegetable garden can be intense, but it only lasts a little while. Once your garden is in, you just need to water and weed it on a regular basis. It is very gratifying to see your seedlings grow into big plants and then start to produce vegetables. You have control over what goes into the garden, which gives you the best veggies around.
