Essential steps for planning a vegetable garden
"Essential steps for planning a vegetable garden"
Setting up a home vegetable garden isn't as simple as picking up your tools, digging and planting some seeds. It entails careful planning before you start growing vegetables. This ensures that you will have a harvest at the end of the season. Planning for setting-up a home vegetable garden consists of many steps: selecting a site; and planning the vegetable garden.
A beginner might think that, when planting a vegetable garden a lot of space is necessary for that garden. What they don't know is that a 25 foot square area is adequate enough to grow vegetables for the entire family.
No matter what the size of your vegetable garden, plan on five essential factors when picking a garden site. First, there should be a source of energy for plants to grow. Hence, your planned vegetable garden site should be exposed to at least six to eight hours of sunlight per day. So, you have to cross out areas near buildings, trees or shrubs from the list of potential garden sites.
Another garden essential on planning is its proximity to the house. When the garden is close to the house, you are more likely to pay your garden more visits to keep up with jobs like weeding, watering, and controlling pests.
Soil is another essential to planning your vegetable garden. Having ideally natural rich soil isn't always the case. However, the soil that you use should have the required nutrients and the right texture. In cases where you have heavy clay or sandy soil, you can improve the soil by using organic matter.
Water is another essential for a plants survival. The garden should receive at least an inch of water every week. Thus, the site should be placed near a water source.
The fifth essential to planning a vegetable garden is good air drainage. Locating the garden in a low spot like the base will only bring about the formation of frost since it is impossible for cold air to drain away. So, do away with these low spots and opt to locate the garden on high ground.
As mentioned earlier, the essentials to planning your vegetable garden is a major step in setting up the home vegetable garden. This major step is divided into two.
The first involves the selection of the vegetables to be grown in the vegetable garden. In selecting the vegetables, you should consider space limitations, climate and other factors that may inhibit the growth of the vegetables you want to include in your garden.
It is always best to look up which vegetables will grow well in your vegetable garden environment before including them in your garden. This saves you the time and the frustration of having nothing to harvest.
The last and final step in planning your vegetable garden, makes use of your artistic skills. This step requires you to make a diagram containing the kinds of vegetables to be planted, the distance between plots and the time of planting. You can also put in the dates to remind you of the necessary tasks.
Vegetable gardening may save you a fortune in buying these products from the nearest supermarket. However, it isn't an easy task. It requires at least the five essential steps for planning a vegetable garden as mentioned above to yield a harvest at the end of the planting season.
As the saying goes, you only reap what you sow.
Have a great time planting!