How to grow vegetables in your own garden

One of the best ways to keep you family healthy is by serving them fresh vegetables from your very own vegetable garden. Gardening is a great hobby and vegetable gardening can be the best method to enhance your creativity and also save a few dollars. So here is the basic knowledge you need to know for vegetable gardening.

• Location: Place the garden near your kitchen. It will be easy to run out and pick a few things you need, and you can spy on the garden from your window. Picking tomatoes after you see them blush crimson is a perfect way to get them at their best. Plant vertically to save space.  

Instead of letting beans, cucumbers, melons, and squash sprawl across the ground, you can let them climb a trellis o. For the best growth to be made, a good vegetable gardening tip is to see that your soil is a rich, sandy loam type of soil. If it requires more nutrients, then the addition of compost or manure will satisfy the problem. You will need to place the compost underneath and around your vegetables as well. Happy smelling though!

• Choosing your vegetables: Choose the vegetables according to the choice of your family and the season. If this is your first time in gardening try to start with a miniature garden and work your ways up to larger ones after you gain knowledge.For the first time think of just planting 3 to 5 different vegetables of your families favorites.
• When to grow: start growing vegetables early in the spring. Keep planting all summer long so something fresh and tasty is always ready to harvest. You will reap the rewards for a long time that way.

Size and amount: In this case size does not matter. If you have a small space you can grow minature veggies, or even grow them in pots on your balcony. So size is no excuse! Try a little bit of each vegetable like tomatoes, squash, and green beans along with corn. Sunshine is needed: Pick a space that will receive enough sunshine and enough room to spread the veggies. Did you know that 95% of all vegetables need 5-6 hours of sunshine each and every day! Taller plants at maturity should be in the northern end of the garden and the shorter ones on the south end so as not to block the sun in subsequent rows of plants. So it just requires a little bit of pre-planning.

• East to west rows: 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.
• Fertilizers: You can check with your local garden shop for information about which fertilizer is best for your area. After you have spread your fertilizer, you will need to to mix the fertilizer with the soil and water it.
• Provide protection to seeds: Use water-filled tepees around early planted tender vegetables for protection from the cold. You can buy inexpensive plastic sheets of connected tubes that, when filled with water, form self-supporting walls around seedlings. The clear walls allow sun to penetrate to the plant inside while the solar-heated water stays warm into the night.

• Extend the fall harvest season for crops such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli with a warm coat of straw. Although it may never be fashionably chic, straw does trap heat effectively.
• Watering the plants: Seeds such as broccoli, cabbage, and arugula use moisture efficiently and germinate promptly without presoaking. But slower-starting parsley and parsnip seeds benefit from presoaking. Dunk the seeds in room-temperature water for several hours or even overnight, but don't forget them and leave them in too long. Drain and plant the seeds immediately.
• Do all this organically-for your family's sake: 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.

With the prices of fresh vegetables seeming to rise every season and their availability sometimes interrupted by weather conditions, it's better to have your own vegetable garden which adds beauty to your landscape as well. Happy planting, growing, harvesting and of course eating!

(Sources: howstuffworks.com, basic-info-4-organic-fertilizers.com)