Beginning A Vegetable Garden

There are many benefits to growing your own vegetables in a backyard garden. Picking corn or spinach or potatoes from your own garden and bringing them inside, cooking them for dinner while they are fresh and full of flavor, is extremely rewarding. It allows you to eat the best-tasting and healthiest food. Vegetables you buy in the grocery store may have been refrigerated for a week or more, transported across the country, and may contain trace chemicals you do not want to think about. If you are planning your own garden, here are some tips to help you get started.

Plan a garden of modest size to start out, but with room to expand it if you find you can handle more. Gardening can be a lot of work. It is best to start small while you are learning. Later you can expand to more types of vegetables and a larger space. Choose the sunniest area of your yard for a vegetable garden. Sunlight and good soil are the two most important ingredients for a successful garden. Once you have chosen a sunny spot and scalped the soil, removing grass or other plants that are there, you need to break up the soil. This can be done with a rototiller, but if you can get someone to plow it, that is even better. For a really small garden, you can turn the soil with a shovel. This tilling breaks up any old roots left in the soil. It also brings air into the ground and creates pliable soil for your new garden plants to grow in.

Create a map for how you want to layout your garden. Use strings attached to stakes to create straight rows. Rake the soil well with a garden rake to break it up into finer granules, getting rid of clumps. Now you have the kind of soil that plants like to grow in.

Take a sample of your garden soil to be analyzed. Find out its pH and correct it if necessary; that is, if it is too 'sweet' or too acidic. Applying some lime will bring down the acidity. If you have some compost, work it into the soil to enrich its nutrients.

In truth, most vegetables are easy to grow if you have given them the right conditions of sun, soil and water. Most people start with tomatoes, onions, lettuce and radishes. These are good to begin with. Branch out to include other vegetables you particularly like. Potatoes and squash are easy to grow. Brussels sprouts with their tall stalks are fun and easy, as are broccoli and eggplant.

The early stages, when you first see your seedlings growing, are exciting and almost magical. The hard work comes later on when you have to weed and cultivate on hot days, or spend time watering during a long dry spell.
Harvesting your very own vegetables is the most fun of all.

Once you have started gardening, you will want to continue. There is always more to plant and more to learn. Gardening is truly one of the most rewarding things you can do.