If you've dreamed of having healthier, readily available fresh foods for
your family to eat whenever they'd like, you may have started wondering
how to plant a vegetable garden. Planting your very own vegetable
garden allows you to control whether harmful chemicals are used on the
foods you eat, allows you to have fresh vegetables for cooking or eating
raw during harvesting season, and saves you money both in the summer
and winter, because you can freeze or can the vegetables you grow and
use them throughout the year.
Planting a vegetable garden is not
difficult either, but there are a few steps involved. First you have to
plan the location of your vegetable garden, then you need to prepare the
soil for your vegetable garden, then you will plant your seeds or
starter plants. From then on, it's just a matter of caring for your
vegetable plants and keeping the weeds away. And before very long you
will find yourself outside picking fresh vegetables right off the vine.
Planning your Vegetable Garden
The first thing you'll need to learn about how to plant a vegetable
garden, is that location is very important. Vegetables need five to six
hours a day of full sunlight, so where you place your vegetable garden
plays an important role in how successful that garden will be.
You will also need to plan your space wisely. Depending upon how many
vegetables you want to plant, and how much of each vegetable you'd like
to be able to harvest, you might find you need quite a bit of room for
your vegetable garden. A family of four for instance, generally needs
rows of vegetables approximately ten feet long to provide enough harvest
for the entire family. So if you want to plant twenty different
vegetables, you will need a lot of space.
Vegetable gardens can
be planted in containers however, so this might be an alternative option
for you to consider. Many vegetables can grow in one container too.
Your best bet for the first time planting a vegetable garden is to start
small. Choose maybe five vegetables to plant for instance, or try
planting smaller amounts of many different vegetables.
Preparing your Soil
The next step you will need to learn about how to plant a vegetable
garden, is that soil preparation is very important. There's a lot to
learn in this area, so we won't cover it in detail here. But the basic
steps involved with preparing your vegetable garden soil involve turning
the soil, and enriching it with compost or other organic matter.
Vegetables need a lot of nutrition to grow well, so the better you
prepare the soil before planting, the better chances you have of
producing a bountiful crop.
Planting Your Vegetables
The third step in learning how to plant a vegetable garden is the fun
part. You will plant your vegetable garden seeds or starter plants in
the newly prepared garden soil.
Now, if you're planting your
vegetables in traditional rows, you'll simply sprinkle seeds along the
top of a row, then cover then lightly with a thin layer of soil. If
you're using starter seedling plants for your vegetable garden, you will
make a slight hole in the top of the row, put your starter plant down
in the hole, then pack the mounded soil around it lightly.
Planting vegetables into raised garden beds is done the same way when
you're using rows. If you decide you'd like to plant your vegetables in
square blocks however, that's easily done in the same ways too.
Alternatively, you can randomly place your vegetable plants and seeds,
and you will get a more natural growth look from your vegetable garden
when the sprouts begin to create leaves and produce.
