Planning A Vegetable Garden
One of the best ways to keep you family loaded with good fresh vegetables is, of course, to construct your very own vegetable garden. Even with your very own vegetable garden the supply of good fresh vegetables will short-lived, however what you can do is haul in all the pickings and either freeze the produce or use a method of preservation like canning your vegetables in mason jars which will provide those same veggies for the rest of the year for your family. When you become a vegetable gardner this will provide an education as to what you have really been eating all along and now can see what the benefits are from your home gardening and see why organic gardening is the way to go. Even the biggest and supposedly best supermarkets buy their produce from large farms that use chemical fertilizers, nasty pesticides and toxic herbicides in and around their plants and your food. When you use these harmful additives to raise vegetables they will thrive off these toxic additives and consequently will end up being fed to you and the family. If you are the one raising those vegetables and being fed to your family you are in control of what you put in and on those veggies and hopefully you can see the wisdom to use organic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Determining what you want and need to grow is the first factor. What will your family eat and what do they like need be answered when planning a vegetable garden. Try to start with a miniature garden and work your way up to larger ones after you gain knowledge especially if this is the first time growing a garden. Putting in a lot of work and then have it fail can easily discourage future gardens. Build that knowledge and confidence. Consider just planting 3 to 5 different vegetables of your favorites the first time around and of course involve the kids and spouse. Everyone will gain the feeling of contributing and pride when the growing season is over and will probably make this food taste so much better. Next step is determine where you want to place your garden on your property/yard. Pick a space that will receive enough sunshine and enough room to spread the veggies and not on top of each other. 95% of all vegetables need 5-6 hours of sunshine each and every day. If your vegetable garden is small, you can in all probability select a space which is only about 6 by 8 feet. Try a little bit of each vegetable like tomatoes, squash, green beans along with corn. Now that you have found your perfect location for the garden bring in a couple loads of compost placed on top of the present soil. Look at either building a raised vegetable or ground level garden depending whether you can bend more or less. You will need to slightly turn the soil and get rid of all weeds, old roots and large rocks if you are planting at ground level. Then mix in some healthy compost into the soil thus your vegetables will have a good start with the nutrition they require for growing. After building up your soil, section off for planting rows or mounds that will be used to put seeds or seedlings in. Since the sun crosses the sky from east to west so should your garden rows to get the maximum sunshine to all plants. If you begin planting seeds or starter plants, make sure to place those that will grow the largest at the north side of your plot, so they will not shade the littler plants so much throughout the day. The smallest plants on the south side of your vegetable garden plot.
Things to remember when planning:
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