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Plan Before Planting Vegetable Gardens – What You Can Do

Weekend Gardener — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:26:25 +0000

In order to maximize your garden space, get the best growing potential out of your soil, as well as take advantage of the sunlight and temperatures in your area you’re going to need to plan before planting vegetable gardens.

It’s best to take a look at the location for your vegetable garden before you begin planning what type of vegetables you’d like to have. Some areas are going to have more shade than others, while others, may see sunlight all day long. Certain plants are going to do better with a little bit of shade, while others may need that full sun. Most vegetable plants need at least five hours of sunlight in order to grow well, so you need to make sure the trees, fences, and other shading sources are not going to affect the growing vegetables.

You’ll also want to take a look at where your water sources are, there’s nothing worse than having to pack buckets of water to your garden. You’ll need to be close to a hose to make watering easily. You’ll also need to make sure that you have the proper soil and drainage. And it’s always nice, if it’s not too far from your daily routes so you can check for weeds, pests, or wilting.

Now that you know where your planting your garden you can effectively choose those vegetables that are going to do well in that area. Remember, certain plants like a bit of shade, other vegetables like full sun, and of course they all grow at different rates. Plan your vegetable garden so that you can take advantage of those fast-growing plants to shade others. Also, make sure that those same fast-growing plants don’t shade those type of vegetables that need full sun.

Now it’s time to think about how often your vegetables are going to yield. In other words, you don’t want to have to disturb your pumpkins that yield in the fall, by constantly weeding and taking care of your radishes, beets, or spinach that you’ll be using throughout the season. You want to be able to access these areas easily so that you can either plant more for a second crop, or at least pull them without disturbing the roots of your other plants.

You might want to do a bit of research as far as companion vegetables. This means that some vegetables are going to enhance the growing of other types of vegetables, and of course, the reverse is true. Potatoes are eminently capable of inhibiting the growth of certain types of squash, and tomatoes. So do bit of research as to what plants enhance each other, and which plants inhibit the growth of others.

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Vegetable Gardening For Beginners – 6 Easy Tips To Start You Off

Weekend Gardener — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:40:07 +0000

Healthy vegetable gardens do more than provide a beautiful area in your yard. They repay your labor with nutritious food and a healthy varied diet. Vegetable gardeners are in tune with the environment, giving back to the soil what they take from it. Abundant vegetable gardens start with healthy, rich soil. Compost and mulch contribute to that natural wealth.

About 11,000 years ago, the first farmers began to select and cultivate desired food plants in the southwest Asian Fertile Crescent – between the ancient Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Although we believe there was some use of wild cereals before that time, the earliest crops were barley, bitter vetch, chick peas, flax, lentils, peas, emmer, and wheat. About 9,000 years ago, Egyptians began to grow wheat and barley. About the same time, farmers in the Far East began to grow rice, soy, mung, azuki, and taro.

Then, about 7,000 years ago, ancient Sumarians established the first organized agricultural practices that made large-scale farming possible. Of particular note, they established irrigation as a way to nurture crops where none were possible before. Vegetable gardeners today use many of the same techniques established in early history. But today’s vegetable gardeners have millennia of experience behind them. Trial and error today is success or failure at the margins. Failure is not disaster.

As in centuries passed, a successful vegetable gardener cultivates the garden before planting for three main reasons: to eliminate weeds, to distribute air and nutrients throughout the soil, and to conserve moisture. Preparation of the soil is the single most important step in assuring abundant harvests.

Weeds are the most powerful enemy of a healthy vegetable garden. Letting them multiply in your vegetable garden will create much work and disappointment through the growing season. And when your vegetables begin to grow, removing weeds can your new vegetable plants beyond repair. Weeds also steal the precious nutrients necessary to produce healthy vegetables.

Rather than sacrificing the new garden to a patch of weeds, the successful vegetable gardener will cultivate the bed often, breaking up the soil to maintain healthy air, moisture, and heat to facilitate desirable chemical processes that produce abundant plant food. Ancient growers learned by trial and error the importance of keeping the soil loose around young plants. Early farmers deposited rotten fish beneath their crops as fertilizer and then used tools of shell and stone to nurture healthy soil and get plentiful air to the roots of their crops.

As important as air is water, even when the vegetable garden is a promise waiting for new seeds. Consider the process of “capillary attraction” – the ability of a substance to pull another substance into it. When you dip one end of a strip of blotting paper into water, you’ll see that the moisture moves up the invisible channels formed by the paper’s texture. But when you place the side edge of the blotting paper into water, the moisture won’t move upward. In a vegetable garden, capillary attraction describes the attraction of water molecules to soil particles. Well cultivated, loose soil maximizes capillary action, maintaining an even distribution of moisture throughout your vegetable garden soil.

Even so, water stored in soil during rain immediately begins to escape, evaporating into the air. Surface water is the first to vaporize into the atmosphere. With capillary action, sub-surface water moves upward and evaporates. Left to natural processes, your garden will lose its moisture as quickly as if you left sponges in the topsoil. Cultivating your vegetable garden by hoeing the soil around your plants disturbs natural capillary action and slows the loss of water for your vegetables.

It’s important to hoe your vegetable garden often, particularly those areas not shaded, at the very least every other week. If this seems too difficult, using a wheel hoe will reduce your labor and keep your vegetable garden healthy and productive. Looking somewhat like an old-fashioned plow, the wheel hoe allows you to cultivate very close to your healthy plants, maintaining an even depth and destroying new weeds before they get established. With the wheel hoe, you can cultivate as fast as you can walk.

If you wait until weeds are established, you’ll have to pull the weeds by hand, damaging the root systems of your vegetables, depleting the soil of nutrients, and creating a much greater workload for you as gardener. And the work you invest will not be to cultivate a productive crop. It will be to prevent damage that may have already been done. A wheel hoe is essential for a large vegetable garden, but it will also save much time and effort in a small one. However, a simple scuffle hoe is effective in small spaces as well. It takes less storage space and cultivates the soil effectively.

Preparing your vegetable garden properly before you plant vegetables is well worth the investment in time and labor. Keeping your vegetable garden rows free of weeds later on is slow going and difficult. Here are a few tips for keeping your vegetable garden clean and clear of weeds as your plants mature:

1. Work at the weeds while the ground is soft and/or moist. Soon after a rain is the best time. Weeds will come out by the root easier without breaking off, leaving the unwanted plant to grow again.

2. Just before you weed your vegetable garden, cultivate the rows with your wheel or scuffle hoe very shallow in the topsoil and as close to your vegetable plants as possible. This will loosen the soil and make weeds easy to see. A double-wheel hoe with discs is best for this purpose, especially for large plants.

3. Make sure all of the soil is loosened when you cultivate. Pull all the weeds out carefully, avoiding disturbing the vegetable plants. Your weeder will destroy weed seedlings, but you’ll have to hand-weed near plant bases and where weeds have matured.

4. Use a small hand-weeder near your vegetable plants. It will loosen the soil, making weeds easier to eliminate, and save a lot of wear and tear on your hands and fingers.

5. Practice with your wheel hoe. At first, watch the wheel’s direction and the pressure you put on the handles. The discs or rakes will follow automatically, maintaining an appropriate cultivation depth in your vegetable garden rows.

6. “Hilling” was once a common way to nurture young vegetable plants. This is done by building the soil up around the stems of young vegetable plants, usually the after you’ve hoed your garden two or three times. In wet soils or dry climates, hilling may still be the way to go. But in most areas, level soil is best. It makes it easier to cultivate the soil in the long run, thereby assuring healthy vegetable plants through the growing season.

Rotating Vegetable Crops

Crop rotation, or growing different vegetable crops each time you plant, is an important part of maintaining a healthy, productive vegetable garden. Some Roman texts mention crop rotation, and early Asian and African farmers also found rotation a productive method. During the Muslim Golden Age of Agriculture, engineers and farmers introduced today’s modern crop rotation methods where they alternated winter and summer crops and left fields fallow during some growing seasons. With Chemical Revolution of the mid-20th Century, crop rotation lost some of its appeal. But for home vegetable gardeners, rotation eliminates the risks of using dangerous chemicals and prevents the environmental consequences associated with modern pollutants.

Each different vegetable plant depletes the soil of different nutrients, and each leaves different nutrients as its roots and stems decay. Rotating crops with each planting keeps the soil balanced and rich. Planting the same crop time after time drains it of necessary nutrients, leaving it less productive. Crop rotation also reduces the build-up of pathogens and pests that destroy healthy vegetable gardens. Rotation helps maintain a healthy mix of essential nitrogen in your vegetable garden.

Rotating crops is more important with vegetables like cabbage, but it is a good practice for your vegetable garden generally. Even the hardy onion benefits from rotation, especially if you’ve done a good job of breaking up the old garden soil and mixing the remaining vegetable plants to serve as compost for the following crop. Here are some basic tips about crop rotation:

1. Do not rotate crops of the same vegetable family, for example turnips and cabbage. Be sure the following crop is a complete different type of vegetable.

2. Deep-rooting crops like carrots or parsnips, should follow vegetables with roots near the surface like onions or lettuce.

3. Follow root crops with vines or leaf crops.

4. Rotate vegetable plants that have long growing seasons with quick-growing crops.

5. Decide on your vegetable garden rotation when you’re constructing your planting plan. Making these decisions in the middle of the growing season will be more difficult and waste time and money.

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Cool Weather Vegetable Gardening

Weekend Gardener — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:41:52 +0000

If you’re like most gardeners, you probably can’t wait for the weather to warm up so you can get outside and start planting. Particularly in the case of vegetable gardening, most plants can’t go in the ground until the weather warms up significantly and the danger of frost has passed. But have you considered planting some cool weather vegetable crops that can be sown as early as several weeks before the last expected frost date? Cool weather vegetables are a great way to get a head start on the season’s plantings. Not only do cool weather veggies keep your planting areas productive for more months of the year, they also allow you to get out in the garden earlier in the spring. In this article, we’ll explore a few varieties of cool weather vegetables that you might want to try growing in your garden this spring.

Carrots:
Anyone who says they don’t like carrots has probably never tasted fresh carrots out of a homegrown vegetable garden. Carrots are a great crop to start early in the year because they are resistant to cold temperatures. Sow your carrot seeds directly in the garden as early as the soil can be worked. Good soil preparation is important if you want to have good looking carrots. If there are any sticks or rocks in the top several inches of soil, your carrots will be misshapen because they will have to grow around these obstacles.

After your carrot seeds have germinated, be sure to thin them out early, while the plants are still small. For the best tasting carrots, harvest the plants while they are still young. If carrots stay in the soil too long, they will become tough and less flavorful.

Lettuce:
Lettuce is a very popular homegrown crop because it’s so easy to grow. Lettuce prefers cool temperatures, so it can also be started early in the year. There are many different varieties of lettuce to choose from. For a nice variation, consider buying a packet of mesclun mix seeds, which will give you a sampling of a half dozen or so of the more popular varieties. Lettuce seeds can be sown directly in the garden, or they can be grown in planter boxes on a porch or patio. One thing to keep in mind about growing lettuce-the plants won’t last all summer long. Lettuce should be planted in the early spring because it will quickly die off in the hot midsummer temperatures. If you have an area of your garden where you grow perennials, consider planting your lettuce there in the early spring, while there’s still plenty of space. By the time your perennials start getting bigger, your lettuce crop will be just about done for the year anyway, and can be removed.

Spinach:
Spinach, like lettuce, is another leafy vegetable that grows well in cool spring temperatures. Spinach seeds can be sown directly in the garden as early as the soil can be worked. For an ongoing crop, you can continue sowing additional spinach seeds at 10 day intervals until the weather becomes too warm for the plants. Young spinach plants are a favorite of rabbits, so if these garden pests become a problem in your yard, you may have to install chicken wire fencing around your garden area. Another option is to sprinkle bloodmeal around the plants. Many animals, including rabbits, will not cross a line of bloodmeal.

Peas:
Peas are another cool weather favorite, growing easily from early spring until the weather becomes too warm for the plant to tolerate. One of the best things about peas is that they are a vining plant, meaning they will grow vertically upward. This means that they take up a very small amount of garden real estate, while still producing heavily. Peas should be sown directly in the garden as early as the soil can be worked. One good method is to plant your peas in long rows, and once the plants germinate, provide a fence of plastic netting or chicken wire alongside the row for the plants to grow upon. It’s also a good idea to add a thick layer of mulch to the established pea vines to help keep the roots cool and to retain soil moisture.

Carrots, lettuce, spinach, and peas are just a few examples of cool weather vegetables. There are many other vegetables in addition to these that can be planted early in the spring. With a little experimentation, you’ll be able to find a mix of cool weather veggies that you can grow early in the year to make better use of your garden space and to give your green thumb an early spring workout.

Can someone tell me what vegetable plants are best for container gardening?

Weekend Gardener — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:04:53 +0000

smiley_girl2265 asked:

Hi..I was wondering if someone could tell me what vegetable plants are easiest to grow for containers.I do not have the room for a full size garden this year but would like to be able to grow some vegetables this year.Thanks

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What vegetable plants thrive in shade?

Weekend Gardener — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:12:42 +0000

matt b asked:

I have two raised beds in my garden for vegetables. One gets full sun the other has shade for a good portion of the day. What vegetables will do well in the shady bed? Also, I am in Southern Oregon if that makes a difference. Thanks!

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How do I get rid of crab grass and weeds in my vegetable garden without killing my plants?

Weekend Gardener — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:05:44 +0000

asked:

It’s just ridiculous how much crab grass is sprouting up in my veggie garden, and there is no way I can pull it all out by hand. What is safe to use on it but will not harm my vegetable plants?

Have you ever had a vegetable and non vegetable garden combined.What kind of plants did you use?

Weekend Gardener — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:53:17 +0000

joyce asked:

I have a very small space. I want to use short plants. This will be in a front yard. I want to use flowers to kind of hide the vegetable garden. I don’t have a backyard. This will be my first time trying this. Please send suggestions.Thanks. Have a great day.

My Vegetable Garden 2008

Weekend Gardener — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:56:28 +0000

themomentstudio asked:

Our vegetable garden in 2008. A trellis was added to our backyard vegetable garden for tall vegetable plants such as long beans, luffa, gourd, and black berry vine. …