Vegetable gardening is a great idea if you want fresh organic food for you and your family. The best type of gardening is organic gardening. Do your bit for green living and go organic. Organic vegetables are one of the best ways to ensure long-term health and fitness. Gardening with your family can save you a fair amount of money and bring lots of joy around the home.
How to grow a vegetable garden
Growing vegetables is not difficult and it requires is a little work, sunshine and water. Follow the below basic vegetable gardening tips and ideas. Mulching is required to keep the weed growth to a minimum, I use bark and the grass from my mower. This also feed the soil as it rots.
Climate and Soil
Ensure that you garden is located in an area that get at least 5 hours per day. Add some compost and well-rotted manure to the soil to ensure that you provide your veggie plants all the nutrients they may require. I prefer to add a bit of compost every 4 weeks for the best growth. Water well every second day and you will be rewarded with bountiful crop.
Selecting seeds and plants
For a beginner gardener I would suggest trying out the below crops first, they are easy to grow and very rewarding and nutritious. As you get better at this, you can expand your crops list and the rewards never stop.
Grow Onions from Bulbs or Sets
Buy onions sets for quicker growth, they grow very quickly and easily from bulbs. They take 5 to 6 months for full growth but you can start using them as soon as they are at the size you like. These can be purchased from your local nursery.
Grow Beetroot
Beetroot can be grown from seed or bought as young plants, harvest time is 2 to 3 months. The leaves can also be used as an herb and in salads although this may reduce the size of the bulbs.
Grow Swiss Chard
Swiss chard can be grown from seed or bought as young plants, they can be grown almost all year round, they are also visually appealing if you choose the multi color variety. What I like most about Swiss chard you can cut the leaves you need and it grows again. Between 6 to 10, plants can provide a weekly meal for a family of 4. You can keep cutting the outer leave and magically within a week or two, they grow back.
Grow Carrots
Carrots can be very easy to grow and very tasty. Once you taste the difference between a bought carrot and an home grown one you will keep trying to grow your own. The two greatest enemies of carrots are carrot fly and stones that can cause your carrots to become deformed, the upside of deformed carrots is that the shapes can sometimes be very funny.
Grow Tomatoes
Tomatoes are easy to grow and you lots and lots of fresh organic tomatoes. They die off in winter or with any frost so avoid the cold months. There are a large variety that you can get and they also come in different colors from red, dark red, yellow and even purple. I prefer growing cherry tomatoes for salads and beefsteak for cooking. Tomatoes is a vining plant that requires staking so that can be time consuming as you need to keep training them on either a fence of stake. Over watering can lead to the tomatoes swelling too much and cracking. All in all these are one of the most rewarding plants to have in your vegetable garden.
Grow Peppers
Almost forgot about the peppers. These come in a wide variety of colors, flavours and shapes. I love to have some sweet and hot peppers in my garden. These can be used in almost any dish in the kitchen. Peppers don’t like the cold so starting after the last frost is best. After a harvest, hot peppers can be sun dried for later use.
As you can see organic vegetable garden can be lots of fun and very rewarding for the entire family. Reducing your tips to the store for fresh veggies can reduce your carbon footstep so it is the green thing to do. The money saved can be used to fill up your rainy day fund. The hardest part of gardening is taking the first step and just starting.
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