Vegetable gardening at home become popular. Most people want to have own vegetable garden at their home so they can eat the fresh and healthy vegetables from their garden. But as beginners, you don’t know how to start vegetable gardening. Don’t worry, vegetable gardening is not so complicated even you are beginner but keep in mind it still need your effort. With below vegetable gardening tips for beginners, I believe you can start a vegetable garden at home successfully.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners
You need to follow below 10 vegetable gardening tips for beginners in order to harvest a lot of vegetables:
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #1: Choose Easy to Grow Vegetables
As beginner, you need to choose easy to grow vegetables such as salad green leaf, beans, peas, tomatoes etc. This vegetables are so easy to grow and very rewarding at harvest time. Just start a small vegetable garden with 1-3 vegetables plant, if you feel successful, you can add another vegetable varieties as well the space.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #2: Loosen the Garden Soil
The garden soil need to be loosened up so the roots of the tender vegetable plants can grow into your garden soil, make strong and healthy plants. This way is needed to make the roots jobs easy since roots are the only way the plant takes up nutrients and water. The best time to dig your garden soil is early spring when it is moist enough but not so wet that the soil is heavy and muddy. Below are the steps:
- Mark out your spot and make sure there are no trees or large shrubs around it with roots that will spread into your vegetable garden.
- Remove the grass in your vegetable garden.
- Make border around the garden to keep the vegetable garden neat and weed free.
- Build a short fence if you have pets, so the garden cannot be mistaken by pets easily.
- Dig your garden soil at least 12 inches depth to loosen the clumps and allow air in. You can use digging fork or rototiller and continue with rakes.
Mix well about 2 inches of compost it into the garden soil. Compost can be added into soil around 10-20% of the soil but no more since it can make over-fertilize garden which is not good.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #4: Controlling pH by Adding Lime or Gypsum
Adding lime or gypsum into your garden soil will balance the pH. It is recommended to add lime every year in area with lots of rainfall, about 1 pound per 100 sq. feet. But if you have low rainfall each year, you may add some Gypsum to garden to remove some of the salt content. You can check the correct amount with your local garden center.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #5: Planning Before You Plant
Planning before you plant will allow enough space for the plants you want to grow otherwise the plants will become stressed and may not produce good yield. You can get information on how much space the plants will need when you purchase them. But generally, allow 18-24 inches spacing for most plants. You may use a paper and pencil to draw the vegetable garden plan out. Don’t forget to put the tallest plant in the back so they don’t shade the shorter plant since the sunlight is very important to all of the plants.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #6: Plant at Least 2-3 of Each Type of Plant
Depend on how many vegetables you want, you need to plant at least 2-3 of each type of plant so you will have not so much same fruits or leaves to be eaten by you or your family.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #7: Water Gently After Planting
You have to water gently after planting until the soil is moist at least 1 inch below the surface. Just water again when the top soil appears dry. To keep the soil cool when the temperatures go up and to protect the soil from drying out so quickly in summer, you may put newspaper strips or pine needles as mulch around the plants.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #8: Keep an Eye Out for Insect Damage
Looking at the plants and find out signs of insect damage such as holes on the leaf. If you see that sign, you can use an organic pesticide / insecticide. But not all insect are bad, there as so many beneficial insects to the plants. You can plant a companion plants to repel the insects. So keep in mind to only use the pesticide especially chemical pesticide if you see the pest is eating a leaf and causing severe damage according and always follow to the package instructions.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #9: Weed Should Be Pulled and Not Sprayed
The poison to the weeds is poison also to us. You may check weeds every 2-3 days, you should pull manually or use a weeding tool. Using a mulch will keep away many weeds in the garden from starting.
Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners #10: Organic Fertilizers
Fertilizer is required by the plant to keep them strong and healthy. You can use organic fertilizers such as worm castings / vermicompost or other organic dry fertilizers which can be purchased at garden center. You may use the fertilizers mixed in at planting time and last almost the whole growing season. You may use a spray on fertilizer, approximately every 3-4 weeks, just spray the leaves of the plants according to package instructions.
So there are 10 vegetable gardening tips for beginners, if you can follow above gardening tips, you will be successful in harvesting lots of vegetables. Vegetable gardening is really easy and you will learn more every year. If something does not work in the first time, don’t get discouraged, you only need continue learning and do some experiment.
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