Are you looking to savor the delicious flavor of a just-plucked tomato from your backyard? Today, vegetable gardening has become more popular than ever as more and more people are increasingly looking for great-tasting vegetables. In 2020 alone, over 39 million U.S. households started growing their vegetables. This figure has significantly increased over the years.
U.S. vegetable gardening participation 2020 | Statista
Growing fresh and delicious veggies is no walk in the park, as it requires much knowledge and effort. Fortunately, this guide is carefully curated to get you up and running in less than no time.
Choosing a Spot for Your Vegetable Garden
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Choosing a spot to grow your vegetables is an important decision. The right location can improve your gardening experience and increase your plant’s chances of survival.
There’s no gainsaying that vegetable gardening requires space, but you don’t necessarily need a sprawling farm. When it comes to growing vegetables, you have multiple options. You can toe the traditional line by planting directly in the ground or opt for raised beds.
Alternatively, you can grow your delicious veggies in pots or containers. Fortunately, many vegetables thrive in containers and pots, like lettuce, radishes, and carrots.
Growing healthy and tasty vegetables require more than mapping out a garden patch. Your plants need a conducive environment with ample sunlight, proximity to a water source, deep and well-drained soil, air, and care to stay healthy and thrive.
Importantly, try not to locate your vegetable patch close to trees and large bushes so they don’t compete with your plants for access to water, sunlight, and essential nutrients. Fortunately, you can modify nutrient-deficient soil, run new water lines, and remove unwanted trees.
Check that the site is level and possesses good soil for vegetables to thrive. The soil shouldn’t be compacted or too stony. Good soil for vegetable gardening should be rich in nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, and magnesium. Additionally, pH levels should vary between 6.0 and 6.8, and a minimum organic matter level of 5 percent.
Amending your soil might be the best way to meet all these requirements. If soil organic matter is low, you might have to apply nitrogen to the soil, typically at planting. Nitrogen application is generally done by side dressing.
There are recommended guidelines for applying nitrogen side dressings without conducting a soil test. Keep in mind that the quantity and time of application depend on the type of vegetable plant. For example, tomatoes require one pound of ammonium nitrate per 100 feet row. You can apply it a couple of weeks before the first fruit ripens, after harvesting the first ripe tomato, or after one month.
Do not apply nitrogen side dressing to sweet potatoes and watermelons because excessive nitrogen levels in the soil affect yield and quality of produce.
Other soil amendments include peat moss, manure, and fertilizer. Consider applying 1-2 pounds of balanced fertilizer per 100 feet of row. For an empty garden patch, use two pounds or four cups of fertilizer per 100 sq. ft of space.
As a gardener, strive to till your garden soil several times each growing season. Tilling your soil and adding soil amendments in the spring will help create a conducive seedbed for your plants. Then, work the soil again and add organic matter in the fall to disrupt active pest cycles. Remember that excessive tillage or tilling wet soil can affect the soil structure and form a deep hard layer of soil.
Furthermore, choose a planting site that meets the sunlight requirement of the vegetables you want to grow. For example, vegetables grown for their leaves and storage roots, like spinach, kale, lettuce, beets, turnips, and radishes, require six to eight hours of sunlight to produce at optimal levels.
Similarly, plants grown for their fruits, like peppers, squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers, need a minimum of eight hours of direct sunlight. However, the six to eight-hour sunlight rule doesn’t apply to all vegetables. For example, plants grown for buds or stems like onion, leeks, brussels sprouts, asparagus, cauliflower, and broccoli can produce optimally with three hours of full sunlight or constant dappled sun daily.
Measuring Sunlight Exposure in Your Vegetable Gardening Site
Knowing how much sun your vegetable patch receives will be handy in picking which plants to grow. But, you see, the thing is, many gardeners overestimate how much sun and the type of sun their planting sites receive.
The best way to determine how much sunlight your yard gets is to monitor your planting spot every 30 minutes or for the entire daylight hours. Repeat this action for at least a week or two. Take note of how much sunlight the planting area gets. Additionally, observe the kind of sun your yard receives, whether it’s partial shade, full sun, or dappled sunlight.
A full sun location refers to areas that receive a minimum of six to eight hours of sunlight during daylight hours. On the other hand, partial shade is a term used to describe areas that get four to six hours of sunlight exposure daily.
Dappling sunlight is not a term you hear all the time, despite it being used to describe the sunlight requirements of plants like spinach, carrots, and potatoes. These plants use the sunlight that filters through the foliage and branches of trees that shed their leaves annually.
Planning Your Vegetable Garden
Planning is an essential aspect of establishing a successful vegetable garden. Vegetable gardening goes beyond planting seedlings and watching them grow to maturity. As a gardener, your topmost priority should be ensuring your vegetable patch meets optimal growth requirements for your plants. Yet, even with these considerations, your garden can be more beautiful than flower gardens.
Moreover, vegetable gardens have evolved into creative and attractive pieces. Here are some creative ideas for your vegetable patch:
Gardening in Beds
Consider gardening in beds or conventional row gardening if you have a large yard. Growing your vegetable plants in beds allows you to use available space efficiently.
Keep in mind that gardening in beds or row gardening requires considerable effort. However, the upside is that beds can help your weed problem later in the growing season. For one, beds shade weed seeds and prevent them from growing later.
Vegetables make lovely bedding plants. This is especially true for vegetables that grow quickly and are harvested regularly, like radishes, lettuce, and spinach.
Consider planting flowers with strong scents alongside your vegetables to improve the appearance of your garden and repel animals that may find your veggies enticing. Moreover, These companion flowers also attract pollinators and serve as trap crops.
Container Gardens
Many vegetables, like beets, beans, eggplants, lettuce, spinach, potato, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and cucumbers, grow well in containers with enough depth to support their roots.
However, gardening in containers or crates allows you to grow enough vegetables. That’s because you can fit a lot of vegetable plants in one container. In addition, there’s a reduced risk of overcrowding, considering these veggies are harvested frequently. Finally, remember to place the crates where the plants can receive sunlight.
It’s important to note that container gardens require more watering than gardens. Therefore, if you grow your veggies in containers, you should install a drip irrigation system with a timer.
Some vegetables are too lovely to stay in your yard. Some good examples include spinach and beets, which look as beautiful as they taste. Consider growing these plants in pots or containers and placing them strategically in the garden. Moreover, their fresh-looking and lush leaves can give your garden an attractive and ornamental look.
Importantly, make sure the containers you use have good drainage. Using pots or containers without enough drainage can put the plants at risk of dying. The root of vegetable plants usually rots when the soil becomes too damp.
Raised Vegetable Gardening Beds
Raised beds have become more prevalent in recent years, especially in areas that have poor soil. They are worth the time and effort required to develop them initially. Benefits include extended growing seasons, increased yields, improved drainage, and simplified maintenance. More so, raised beds serve as a deterrent to burrowing animals like rabbits and rodents.
A significant drawback of raised beds is the constant need for more irrigation to maintain optimal soil moisture levels, as it tends to heat up and dry out quicker.
Raised beds are of two types; temporary and permanent raised beds. The former works well for growing vegetables at home. Gardeners create temporary beds by digging up soil in a strip of about 3 to 4 feet wide.
Tilling the soil makes it aerated enough for the plants to thrive. Besides, keeping the beds off-limits to tillage equipment and foot traffic ensures the aerated soil remains slightly elevated above adjacent pathways. Finally, add organic matter, like compost, to raise the bed even higher.
The best part about temporary raised beds is their ease of use and cost-effectiveness. They require fewer resources and effort to develop than permanent beds.
A significant downside is that temporary beds require reconstruction the following year because they tend to flatten during planting season. While the absence of walls makes temporary raised beds easier to create, it puts the soil in the bed at risk of washing away and ending up in the surrounding ground.
Permanent raised beds, on the other hand, produce long-lasting results. The walls help mitigate erosion and facilitate deep soil amendment. You may construct planting berms by moving topsoil to limit foot traffic around the bed. After planting and mulching, berms don’t necessarily require edging to keep the soil intact.
Gardeners generally use treated landscape timbers, old railroad ties, and naturally rot-resistant lumber, like cedar or redwood, as construction materials for walls. Other materials include synthetic lumber, bricks and stones, and concrete blocks. Choose materials that match the rest of your yard design to achieve a cohesive look.
If you opt for treated lumber, avoid using C.A. (copper azole) or CCA-treated wood in creating raised beds for your vegetables. Besides, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has already banned using woods treated with CCA (chromate copper arsenate) in food gardens following widespread concerns that it contains arsenic and chromium.
Similarly, avoid railroad ties treated with creosote as they may cause severe harm to plants that come in direct contact with them. Also, avoid using materials that release chemicals into the soil, like old railway tires. Alternatively, you can use pressure-treated lumber preserved with ACQ (alkaline copper quaternary) since copper benefits plants and animals.
If you’re worried about the safety of using treated lumber in raised beds, consider placing a sturdy plastic barrier between the treated lumber and the garden soil. This is especially important to prevent the plant roots from directly contacting the treated lumber. Be careful not to damage the plastic barrier when tilling the bed.
Raised-bed Design Ideas
Vegetable gardeners have taken raised garden beds to a whole new level. In addition to being functional, raised beds can also be visually appealing. They are generally arranged in a rectangular pattern. As a result, you could have several weathered troughs running through your vegetable garden. This means improved drainage for the soil and less bending for you.
Here are some vital tips for designing raised beds:
– Level the ground to achieve a flat base.
– Beds should have a width of 4 ft so you can easily access its center from both sides. With lumber readily available in 4-foot segments, you will only spend so much time sawing in building the bed.
– Keep the width of the bed at 3 ft if you can only access it from one side. That way, tending the bed will be a manageable task.
– Though the length is not crucial in raised beds, consider breaking up long beds into shorter, more manageable sections to improve your gardening experience.
– Avoid walking or deploying garden tools like wheelbarrows in raised beds to prevent the soil from becoming compact.
– While most vegetable plants require a rooting zone of about 6 to 12 inches deep, make your raised beds deeper for higher yields.
– Make sure the stakes holding the walls are high enough, preferably double the height of the bed. One half goes into the ground, and the other half projecting above the ground serves as support.
– Ease of access should be topmost on your mind when designing raised beds. One-foot-wide pathways will suffice for foot traffic only. Sometimes, plants on the border of the beds may encroach on walking spaces. Consider making the paths 2- to 3-foot-wide to make room for equipment like a garden cart.
– Use organic mulches, like hay or straw, to combat the problems of soil warming faster and drying out more quickly. Moreover, organic mulches lower soil temperatures, prevent water loss through evaporation and suppress weed growth.
– Use irrigation to make up for rainfall during dry seasons. Consider placing drip irrigation or soaker hoses directly on the bed.
– You can add more organic matter to the bed by tilling plant residue in the soil after the growing season. Also, consider adding an extra layer of compost before the next planting.
Hanging Planters
Many vegetables grow successfully in hanging planters, partly because of the heat that gets reflected off the wall. Take the initiative and hang garden containers or planters fastened to sturdy boards along the walls of your garden. You can use old buckets, drawers, or ceramic bowls as planters. Whatever you choose, ensure the container can carry the weight of wet soil and ripening vegetable plants.
Build a Greenhouse
A greenhouse can give you more time to grow fresh vegetables if you live in an area with a short growing season. Greenhouses come in different shapes and sizes. Make sure you get the best greenhouse that suits your specific needs.
Pick a secluded area in your vegetable garden and set up a greenhouse. Take care not to obstruct the main entrance of your yard or block access to sunlight. Aesthetically, greenhouses can improve the appearance of your garden.
Picking a Vegetable Plant to Grow
This is a fun yet important aspect of planning a vegetable garden. Unfortunately, many gardeners, especially first-timers, try to squeeze in more seedlings than they should without paying attention to essential details.
Vegetables are herbaceous plants whose seeds, leaves, fruit, roots, stems, bulbs, flowers, or tubers are edible. These plants are generally annuals, except for asparagus and rhubarb, which are perennials. Moreover, asparagus and rhubarb are grown for their stalks, not fruit.
The vegetables you choose to grow should primarily be influenced by what you and your family enjoy cooking and eating. Additionally, you must factor in the time, energy, and resources required to manage a vegetable. For example, some vegetables, such as sweet corn or snap beans, may require additional time to tend, from sowing to harvesting.
Furthermore, space and garden tools are integral in choosing vegetables. For example, if you have a large garden, you’ll need to acquire or lease motorized equipment to turn the soil more efficiently between seasons. Conversely, hand tools can suffice in a miniature garden.
The trick to growing great-tasting vegetables is to pick the best varieties. First, keep in mind that some vegetable plants have wide varieties. Take, for example, tomatoes — there’s the beefsteak, large heirloom, and cherry varieties. In selecting varieties, think about quality, yield, and disease resistance.
If you live in an area with cool weather, consider growing vegetables like beets, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, radishes, potatoes, peas, spinach, broccoli, kale, and cauliflower. Conversely, vegetables like cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, squash, and watermelons grow best in summer.
Whichever way, plan your vegetable garden for continuous production all year round through succession planting. This involves rotating your vegetable crops and replacing old plants with new ones. Planning is integral to growing crops that will yield fresh produce from spring to late fall. For example, you could grow spring peas in spring, summer corn in summer, and lettuce plants in fall.
Vegetable Gardening Planting Methods
Direct Sowing or Buy Seedling Plants
While some gardeners nurture the idea of caring for tiny plants indoors and transplanting them into the garden, many others like to start their plants from seeds. Besides, seeds have more varieties than plants.
Direct sowing or direct seeding means that you start the plants from seeds outdoors rather than starting seeds indoors or buying potted nursery specimens and later transplanting them outside.
Starting seeds indoors may provide an early start, but some plants need to do better under the stress of transplanting or adjusting to new growing conditions. Moreover, many vegetables grow best when seeded in beds at the start of the planting season and allowed to grow without disturbance.
Tips and Tricks for Direct Sowing
Growing your veggies from scratch through direct sowing is a fantastic way to get your hands dirty in the garden. But the thing is, you can’t just throw seeds into the ground and expect a bountiful harvest. You’ll need to give your vegetable seeds some extra attention. Here are some helpful tips and tricks for direct sowing:
1. Weed-free zone: Before planting a single seed, ensure the planting area is weed-free. This will give your seeds the best chance to grow strong and tall without competition for water and nutrients.
2. Follow the instructions on the seed packet: Check the seed packet for all the vital information you need to know, like how deep to plant the seeds and any special germination requirements.
3. Timing is everything: Make sure you plant your vegetable seeds at the right time. While some vegetable plants do best during frost or cold periods, others need warm soil to grow.
4. Take note of planting spot: Nine times out of ten, gardeners, especially first-timers, need help remembering where they planted each seed. Make a habit of marking the spot you tossed a seed with a label or flag.
5. Gentle watering: Before you plant, dampen the soil and water gently as needed, taking care not to wash away the seeds.
6. Keep the soil happy: Your seedlings still need a robust root system, so ensure the soil stays moist until they’ve germinated.
7. Thin it out: Once your seeds have sprouted, thin out the seedlings to give them plenty of room to grow.
8. Pinch it back: Some plants will benefit from a gentle pinch back once they’ve developed about three sets of true leaves. This will help them grow bushier.
9. Protect your seedlings: Keep an eye out for any four-legged pests which may try to munch on your tender young seedlings.
Tips and Tricks for Starting Seeds Indoors
If you reside in an area with a short planting season, it’s a good idea to start growing slow-growing plants like peppers and tomatoes indoors. This way, they’ll have a headstart when it’s time to transplant them into the garden.
Unlike buying fully grown plants from a nursery, starting seeds inside can save you a lot of money. Moreover, indoor seed starting is simpler than you would think! Here are some pointers to get you going:
1. Choosing a container is essential when starting seeds indoors. The best solutions are plastic trays or peat pots with sufficient drainage.
2. Choose a spot that receives enough natural light for your seeds to develop, or use grow lights to enhance it.
3. Water your seeds regularly, but don’t overwater them.
4. Seeds should be kept moist but not soggy.
5. Before transplanting, seedlings need to be progressively acclimated to outdoor circumstances, so be sure to “harden them off.”
6. If you live in a cold area, start your seeds eight weeks before the final anticipated frost date.
7. You may find various information about planting time, days to maturity, light and water requirements, and soil requirements on seed packets. Make sure you carefully read them.
8. Some seeds need a specific temperature to germinate. Use a heat mat if required to maintain the proper temperature.
9. To give your seedlings the best chance of success, adhere to the fertilizer recommendations on the seed packet.
Transplanting Seedling Plants
If you decide to buy seedlings, you’ll need to learn proper transplanting techniques to ensure your vegetable plant’s survival when you move them into the garden.
Timing is crucial when it comes to transplanting your vegetable plants. The optimal times to do it are either early in the growing season before the plants begin to sprout new growth or in the fall when growth starts to slow down. This allows the roots to establish themselves and become cozy before the winter frost arrives.
Summer months may not be the best time to move your vegetable plants into your garden, mainly because of the sweltering heat and scorching sun. In addition, plant leaves tend to lose a lot of moisture during hot periods, adding to the difficulty of transplanting.
There is, however, a bright side. The optimum times to transplant your plants are either in the spring or fall when the weather is much friendlier and milder.
And here’s a quick tip: try to postpone transplanting during the height of your plants’ bloom. Can you imagine how challenging it would be for a plant to settle into a new environment while still devoting its efforts to growing lovely flowers? So, as a basic rule of thumb, select plants still in the early stages of their flowering cycle. Then, you’d find that they are easier to transplant.
Although summer isn’t the perfect time to move your beautiful vegetable plants, there are times when it becomes necessary to do so. Fortunately, you can still make it happen in the summer heat, but with a bit of additional care and attention.
Consider transplanting your garden plants in the late afternoon when the sun is less harsh and the temperatures are slightly more tolerable. Better still, move your plants on a cooler, cloudier day.
Give your plants a thorough, deep soak the day before the planned transplanting. This is especially important to keep the soil damp and the roots hydrated. Soak the roots in a bucket of water for a couple of hours if you’re transplanting bare-root vegetable plants like potatoes, onions, or carrots.
After digging the transplant hole, water the soil till it gets muddy, place the plant in the hole, and cover it halfway with the soil. Ensure you water the transplant hole before filling it. After planting, give the vegetable plant another good soaking to ensure it is adequately hydrated.
Keep the newly transplanted plant out of the sun for a few days. Consider leaning a board in front of the plant or using a floating row cover. Remember that your work is not done after sowing the plant in the hole. You’ll need to keep an eye out for the transplant during the first couple of weeks. Water the plant daily, especially during summer.
Maintaining Your Vegetable Garden
This is where things get more interesting. It may or may not go without saying that vegetable gardens require much maintenance. But, as a vegetable gardener, you should be generous with tending your garden. For starters, water your seedlings and transplants daily until they get established.
As you know, water is one of the critical elements of gardening, considering it makes up about 90% of the plant’s weight. That’s why selecting a gardening site with easy access to a portable water source is crucial to make watering operations seamless. Besides, fetching water with a bucket or hauling a hose hundreds of feet across the yard can make gardening more daunting.
Vegetables require an inch of water weekly to grow optimally. So primarily, you’ll only supply what rain does not provide. A general rule when watering is to aim for the soil, not the plant itself. That’s because splashing water on the foliage of plants can result in widespread diseases and washing away essential nutrients.
The frequency of watering largely depends on rainfall and soil temperature. Don’t wait until your vegetables start wilting or lose turgor. Make a habit of checking your garden soil for moisture. Similarly, observe your vegetable plants for signs of drought stress, like drooping foliage in the morning or evening. The type of soil in your vegetable patch will determine how often it needs watering. For example, clay soil requires less watering compared to sandy soil.
You may need to provide supplemental irrigation for your garden during the summer months. Avoid shallow watering to prevent your plants from growing shallow roots and experiencing drought. However, it is standard practice to water thoroughly any time you decide to water your plants.
A good rule of thumb is to water your plants early in the morning, between six and eight, so their leaves can dry quickly. The downside to evening watering is that it increases the risk of leaf disease infection. Avoid watering your plants during midday or in the sweltering heat.
Adhere strictly to soil analysis recommendations when applying fertilizers to prevent the slow development of flowers and fruits. However, vegetables with extended growth periods, like tomatoes and peppers, may require more fertilizer during planting. Keep an eye out for symptoms of nitrogen and other essential nutrient deficiencies, like yellow foliage and slow growth.
Make sure you stake and mulch your plants early in the growing season. Mulching helps maintain moisture, protect the soil, and slow weed growth. In addition, natural mulches are reputed to improve organic matter and reduce soil temperature. Conversely, gardeners use synthetic mulches to lower soil temperature.
Vegetable plants like sweet corn, peppers, beans, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes, and cabbage respond well to mulching. If you grow perennial crops like asparagus and rhubarb, keep the plants mulched to slow down weed growth and maintain soil moisture levels.
Mulching materials for annual vegetable crops include straw, hay, composts, or materials that decompose by the end of the growing season. Use at least one to two inches of loose mulch, including grass clippings, wheat straw, and shredded leaves, for your vegetable garden. Alternatively, you may use several layers of newspaper to manage soil temperatures.
Managing Pests and Diseases
Pest is one of the downsides of vegetable gardening. These pests attack and threaten the survival of your vegetable plants. That’s why pest control is an essential aspect of gardening that you shouldn’t take lightly. Animals like mice, rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels are regular visitors to vegetable patches.
The trick is to monitor your pest situation closely and act promptly. Then, find ways to keep these unwanted visitors away from your garden area. For example, consider leaving a significant open area between yard edges and garden plants. Though expensive, fencing is an effective way to keep garden pests away.
Interplanting is another practical approach for dealing with weed and pest problems. This practice involves growing several types of vegetables in the same spot simultaneously. Interestingly, an increasing number of vegetable gardeners in the United States practice interplanting.
Common Diseases That Impact Vegetable Gardening
Various microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, viruses, nematodes, and phytoplasmas cause diseases and disorders in vegetable plants. For a vegetable plant to get infected, it must come in contact with plant pathogens. Unfortunately, these pathogens can spread through several channels, including water, wind, infested seed, insects, animals, soil, transplant, and even humans.
Plant pathogens require specific environmental conditions to infect and cause harm to host plants. Many vegetable plant disorders result from nonparasitic problems, such as nutrient excesses or deficiencies, temperature and moisture stresses, herbicide injury, wind damage, and spontaneous changes in the environment. These problems increase the risk of the plants getting infected.
For the most part, understanding the root causes of plant diseases is integral to effective control. Sometimes, plant diseases can be caused by a combination of abiotic and biotic factors. Moreover, insects often spread diseases by carrying bacteria, viruses, and phytoplasmas. These insects usually live on weeds around the garden.
Managing plant diseases in your vegetable garden requires your best efforts at prevention. Choosing disease-resistant varieties can go a long way in reducing the impact of common diseases in your vegetable garden. You can also resolve many issues by adhering strictly to disease prevention practices.
Remember that plants from the same family are generally affected by the same diseases. Broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, radish, turnip, mustard greens, and kohlrabi belong to the cabbage family. Other examples of vegetables and their families are as follows:
– Potato family: Potato, tomato, pepper, and eggplant.
– Cucumber family: watermelon, cucumber, squash, pumpkin, cantaloupe, muskmelon, and gourds.
– Bean family: Peas and beans
– Onion family: Onion, shallot, leek, garlic, and chive.
– Carrot family: Parsnip, celery, and carrot.
– Beet family: spinach and table beet.
Try not to grow crops from the same family close to each other to prevent the spread of diseases when one gets infected. Unfortunately, many gardeners find it challenging to identify diseases and disorders. Moreover, it’s nearly impossible to determine any corrective or preventive measures without identifying the extent of the plant damage.
Disease Prevention Techniques in Home Vegetable Gardens
Crops deprived of water, sunlight, air, and nutrient-rich soil are primarily susceptible to plant diseases. Meanwhile, diseases can result in significant losses. Fortunately, these losses can be mitigated by combining viable disease-prevention techniques.
– Grow adapted, disease-resistant plant varieties.
– Use disease-resistant transplants.
– Plant vegetables from the same family in separate areas of your garden.
– Rotate planting spots to avoid planting vegetables from the same family in the same area each growing season.
– Remove weed plants that harbor pathogens or compete with your plants.
– Use insecticides to get rid of insects that spread disease.
– Remove and destroy infected plant material.
– Promptly dispose of plant debris after harvest.
– Sanitize shears and garden tools.
– Use fungicides in the right way and at the right time.
– Practice a balanced soil fertility regime.
– Provide enough plant nutrients.
– Harvest crops at peak maturity
– Practice mulching
Harvesting Your Delicious Vegetables
Knowing when to harvest your garden vegetables is critical to savoring the best vegetables. Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to harvesting vegetables. While some vegetables, like tomatoes and peppers, show obvious signs of color, others require a bit of skill to know when to pick them.
If you only grow veggies you want to eat fresh, make sure you pick at their peak of flavor. Keep in mind that size and color don’t necessarily indicate great flavor. Sometimes, tasting your veggies may be the only reliable method for determining when to harvest. However, some vegetables are best harvested shortly before attaining full maturity to get optimum texture and flavor.
Different vegetables have different criteria for determining whether they are ready for picking. Take, for example, cabbage – you’ll know it’s ready for harvesting when the cabbage head feels full when you squeeze it gently.
Conclusion
Vegetable gardening is a rewarding venture. In addition to savoring the taste of fresh and delicious vegetables, it promotes good dietary habits while saving on family food expenses. If you’ve ever gardened before, you’ll know that the thrill of gardening is in overcoming unexpected challenges associated with planting seedlings, nurturing them to maturity, and picking the fruits of your labors.
This guide is here to help you start your vegetable gardening journey. Keep in mind that there’s so much you’ll learn along the way. If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts on vegetable gardening, feel free to do so in the comment section. Also, kindly share this post across your social networks.
Resources
1. Vegetable Gardening: A Beginner’s Guide | N.C. State Extension Publications (ncsu.edu)
3. Vegetable Gardening | M.U. Extension (missouri.edu)
4. Vegetable Gardening | National Agricultural Library (usda.gov)
5. Vegetable Gardening Basics – UC Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County (ucanr.edu)
6. Home Vegetable Gardening | Virginia Cooperative Extension | Virginia Tech (vt.edu)
7. The First Steps of Vegetable Gardening | Backyard Farmer | Nebraska (unl.edu)
8. Vegetable Gardening – UF/IFAS Extension (ufl.edu)
9. Types of Vegetable Gardens | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)
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