Posted on July 3, 2007 in Gardening Ideas
Vegetable Gardening Tips
Nothing feels or tastes better than vegetables you pick freshly from your own garden patch. You feel good about growing and harvesting vegetables that you finally bring to your own table. All they ask for is a bit of space-in fact, even just a window box.
Here are some tips to set you off on your own vegetable garden:
- To begin, draw up a plan of the patch that is available for growing vegetables.
- Subtract space for paths and borders.
- List the vegetables you’d like to grow and then mark out space for each one.
- Start work early and stick to the plan.
- Study the growing pattern of the vegetables you intend to grow – some may require more water or sunshine.
- If some vegetables grow very slowly, use the space between such rows to grow fast-growing crops.
- Maintain a distance of 20″ between rows.
- Don’t allow root crops to crowd each other but keep them standing at a distance of 2″-4″.
- Since cabbage and cauliflowers grow up to the same height, you can plant them adjacent to each other and treat them alike. After potatoes, you could grow tomatoes, in the order of height until you reach the front of the garden.
- To continue to growing fresh vegetables, every 10-14 days, make interval plantings of any one vegetable such as beans, sweet corn and peas.
- Practice crop rotation so that your garden patch is not infested with disease from moving from one season to another.
- Don’t grow the same vegetable in the same spot more than once in three years. You should rotate crops individually and in groups.
- If you plant crop on the south side slope of a bed that runs east and west, your crop can be well protected from wind and quick soil warming.
- If you want to plant sweet corn, do it in blocks rather than rows so that any pollen present in the air hovers near the corn stalks. This gives rise to better pollination.
- If annual weeds are a problem, you can get rid of them by spading or tilling the garden and then leaving it for a few weeks. Return after a few weeks and till once more before planting.
- If it’s your first vegetable garden, you’re naturally going to be overenthusiastic about it. But don’t let that coerce you into planting too much. Maintain a small and efficient garden where every bit of land under cultivation will need to be weeded, watered and harvested in the dead of the summer heat. Are you game for this?
- Choose transplants that are strong, hardy and 100% healthy. If they are leggy, throw them out.
- Check that the transplants you’re interested in do not have any disease, damage or are not in good shape before you can buy them. When you bring them home, stand them on the ground and water them, but only a little.
These are just a few tips to set you off.
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