The Basics Of Vegetable Gardening
Get Your FREE Herb Gardening Mini-Course - Limited Time Only!Local experts can be a great place to start your vegetable gardening odyssey. You may not get the one-on-one garden advice you need from a place like Home Depot, but local nursery store owners and master gardeners are great sources of gardening information. Be sure to visit the Farmer’s Almanac page to learn about your local growing season and when the last frost is expected to arrive. This can help you plan when you’ll begin your gardening season. If you’re beginning in late spring or summer, there are still a few quick-growing crops like lettuce and transplanted tomatoes that you may be able to salvage.
The first step in starting a vegetable garden is choosing the right size and location. First, be sure your location is very, very sunny. Most vegetables need a good six to eight hours of direct sunlight each day for the best results. If you have a shadier area, you can stick your spinach and lettuce there. As you assess your yard, be sure to take into account the shade cast by the deciduous trees and the house during certain times of the day. Ideally, the garden will be conveniently situated near the kitchen, so you can tend to it more easily and harvest without hiking long distances. The best soil will be full of nutrients and drain well, so you may need to add organic compost and use garden tools to aerate the soil before you begin.
A gardening expert will usually tell you that raised beds are the best method for effective vegetable gardening. Garden guides love raised beds because they increase the growing area by reducing the amount of garden used for paths, they save fertilizer and compost materials, they are easy and convenient to work with, they work well with trellises, they are 12-15 degrees warmer than the ground so you can plant earlier, and they are beautiful to look at. To begin creating your raised beds, measure and stake down each garden bed and outline the beds with string. To raise the bed, loosen the soil with a shovel or fork and nestle your bed into the plot. Smooth the soil on the surface of the bed with the tines and back edge of a rake. Take your time when shaping the beds, for this step is very important. Each bed should rise eight inches above ground when all is said and done and the most productive raised beds are about three feet wide. You can line the beds with bricks, stones or wood, whichever you prefer.
Over the years, you’ll begin to fine-tune your vegetable gardening. You may find some crops do extraordinarily well, while others are a flop. You may decide to add new veggies to the mix or plant more of a certain crop that worked very well. Once your cool season crop finishes its season (like peas), you can try planting a warm season crop (like zucchini). You may also try a technique known as “interplanting,” which involves planting a quick-maturing crop like lettuce next to slow-growing broccoli. The idea is that you’ll harvest all your lettuce by the time the broccoli is looking to stretch out. Try growing plants from several different varieties to increase your chance of success and to find the best performing types.
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Try These Great Ground Covers!
Get Your FREE Herb Gardening Mini-Course - Limited Time Only!One of the many problems for a new garden is the glaring space between young plants. New gardens need time to mature and fill in and in the meanwhile can look pretty empty. Tired of looking at mulch, plant some ground cover! Use it all over your garden. Use ground cover to help fill in between plants, fountains and garden decor, or around stepping stones.
Before you start planting just anything you need to choose your ground cover based on the light, water, and traffic conditions in your garden. These are some great ground cover suggestions to fit just about any northern garden need.
If you have a sunny garden you might want to consider planting some sedum. It comes in a variety of color shades and growth habits. Because sedum is drought tolerant it will do great in poor soil conditions. It is often used on a lot of those new fangled green roof tops to give you an idea of what kind of environment it likes. Hot, hot and hot! It is not a great ground cover choice if there is going to be a lot of foot traffic, though.
Another good choice for a sunny garden with a path and some stepping stones, is the kitchen herb called thyme. It is great for an area that gets walked on, such as a path, because of it’s aromatic qualities. Give your landscape a cottage garden feel with this herb that also comes in a variety of growth habits and color choices such as creeping thyme, woolly thyme or lemon thyme…there are so many types.
A shaded garden will definitely enjoy a touch of pachysandra. It is a good choice for an area that gets very little sun or an area that gets some dappled sun. It can be grown under a walnut tree and it will allow bulbs and hostas to grow through it without competition-nicely camouflaging unsightly dead leaves and other such garden blemishes. It has a neat growth habit that is easy to control.And it is less invasive than it’s popular nemesis called vinca: vinca is a garden no no because of its rampant invasiveness into woodland areas-so when in doubt choose pachysandra.
If you are a fan of native or woodland plants and your are looking for a shade loving ground cover consider wild ginger. Wild ginger has handsome dark green and round leaves that forest critters like to live under because of the ground hugging flowers. Plant it around the base of a bird feeder to hide the cast off seeds. Supposedly there are some evergreen varieties.
The proper ground cover selection is always going to improve the look of your landscape. Ground covers help cool the roots of plants in your garden and hide unsightly looking detraction. Harmonize your landscape with ground cover. Put some gazing balls in a patch of ground cover for an easy garden decoration idea and just enjoy!
