Vegetable Gardening: Everything You Need to Get Started
It’s okay if you can’t keep a plant alive. This simple gardening guide will help you grow a green thumb fast.
Here’s the thing: gardening is never as simple as it seems. When you think of what a plant needs- water, sun, and soil, how hard can it actually be? Well, it turns out that creating an entire ecosystem is very intricate and complex, but don’t worry this is the simplest guide to growing vegetables and getting your garden set up ASAP. It’s okay to not understand all of the intricacies of gardening at first- it will come. And with inflation and prices continuing to rise with no end in sight, this is the time to dig right in. Not only will you have better tasting produce, but you will never be bored with eating vegetables again as there are hundreds of varieties to try that will have you viewing store bought vegetables as boring, plain, and less flavorful.
Materials
Raised bed: While you can plant directly in the ground, a raised bed is easier for beginners since you don’t have to amend or improve the soil. You can choose wooden or metal. Wooden is more common and it’s easy to DIY on a budget, but metal lasts longer and does not rot like wood will eventually. To save money on soil, fill the bed up with logs, tree cuttings, branches, and cardboard on the bottom.
Soil: Look for a raised bed mix without manure.
Favorite potting mixes:
Budget: Kellogg’s Raised Bed Potting Mix
Great quality: Black Gold Natural & Organic Potting Mix
Best of the Best: Fox Farm Ocean Forest Potting Soil Mix
Stack the soils with the cheaper on the bottom and higher quality soils on top with a layer of compost last to finish.
Compost: Compost is used as a fertilizer, soil amendment, and as a topping to enrich the soil, add nutrients, balance pH and keep moisture in the soil. It does pretty much everything and is the nutrition that a plant needs. Vegetables need it before and during the growing process. And they can never have too much so need to worry about the amount.
Seed starting trays: Starting seeds in trays produces stronger and denser root systems and therefore produces healthier plants while also increasing germination rates. My favorite seed trays are from Epic Gardening that air prune the roots helping seedlings produce stronger root systems. They are more pricey, so if you are on a budget look for seed trays with slits or forget the trays altogether and get a soil blocking maker. Soil blocking presses the soil into solid blocks without the plastic. Just make sure they don’t dry out by keeping them wet often. You can skip this step altogether and buy seedlings at your local nursery.
Other items to consider but okay to skip if you are on a budget:
Azomite: Mineral powder for soil. Provides all the needed minerals that could be lacking in the soil.
Worm castings: Fertilizer made by earthworms. You can add it along with compost and you can never add too much or burn your plants with it.
Mycorrhizae root enhancer: A fertilizer used when transplanting seedlings applied at the roots which acts like a steroid for the root system.
Getting Started
Plan out your garden. Make a list of vegetables you want to grow and check when to plant. Think fall and summer vegetables. For example, fall crops are lettuce, root vegetables, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, kale, etc. Summer crops are tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash, etc.
Check your garden zone. This tells you when to plant. Different varieties perform better in different zones. Knowing this information is the first key to your success. Your gardening schedule is essentially pre-planned for you.
Watch the sun patterns in your yard. Ideally you would want your garden to face south.
Set up your raised bed and start seeds in trays or buy seedlings at your local nursery. Companion planting, planting certain flowers and vegetables together, is vital to success. For example, chives planted near carrots will improve the taste of carrots and basil will boost the flavor of tomatoes.
Watering: Plants prefer consistency so try to water on the same day or days each week. This depends on rain and the temperature. When in doubt, check the soil with your finger and water when the first 2 inches are dry. Overwatering is just as bad as not watering enough. Moreover, try to water at the base of the plant without getting the leaves wet as overhead watering can cause disease as is most evident with tomatoes. Lettuce is exempt from this as it likes to be misted on hotter days.
Fertilizer: Fertilizers can be complicated with the 3 numbers written on all fertilizers representing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. A great all-purpose fertilizer is Down to Earth’s Vegetable Garden Fertilizer. Worm castings and kelp fertilizer are great as well because you can never use too much and worry that you might have burned your plants. Compost is essentially a fertilizer so you can also just use compost to save money.
Gardening is a series of lessons and failures. It can be hard at times, but don’t give up. It might throw some curveballs at you and here are things to watch out for:
Pests: Every garden has beneficial insects and pests. Bigger pests like deer, raccoons, and mice can be deterred easily by creating a fence, sprinkling cayenne pepper, or flashy objects/lights. Garden insect pests can be the most frustrating. Apply beneficial nematodes in the fall. They are microscopic worms that you add to the soil and they take care of a wide range of insect pests. It’s what nature would do.
Disease: Along with watering at the base, choose a distance between plants where each plant can get airflow between the leaves and prune plants when they become too bushy and the sun can not hit all of their leaves.
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mrs-irene.com
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