Planning a Vegetable Garden

Posts Tagged ‘Choosing Vegetables’

Home vegetable gardening — it’s a great alternative to grocery-store vegetables.  If you’ve never eaten home-grown veggies, you are in for a real taste-treat!   Large or small, growing your own food is delicious, rewarding and can provide relief for your food budget.

Getting Started is Easy

It’s easy to get started with growing your own vegetables.  You basically need:

• A sunny space, that you can protect from animals and/or people (if needed).
• Easy access to water.
• Good, well-drained soil (you can add compost to make it better).
• Vegetable seeds, bulbs or plants.
• A few hand tools, such as a shovel, spade and perhaps a hoe.

While there are other gardening tools and equipment you can rent, buy or build, the above will get you started.

If you have a spot in your yard, that’s great; but you can also plant a smaller vegetable garden in containers!  And for those of you who don’t even have a space for containers, in some communities you can rent a plot in a communal garden.

Choosing Your Vegetables

The great part about growing your own home vegetable garden is that you can grow what you like!  Not fond of broccoli?  Don’t grow it.  Love tomatoes?  Grow some extra!

The one thing you do need to consider, though, is your climate — not all veggies grow well everywhere.  For example, I live in South Florida, and broccoli is rather difficult; it normally doesn’t get cool enough for a good crop.  On the other hand, hot chile peppers love it here!

Make yourself a list of all your favorite vegetables that you’d like to grow.  Now consider the space you have available for a garden (and time in which to work it).  For example, most squash, pumpkins, watermelon and cucumbers sprawl and can take up a lot of space.  If you have a very small gardening area, that might be a problem.

You may have to cut down on the number of different vegetables to start with.  But that’s OK if you do; just begin with what you love best and then you can go from there.

Time of Year to Grow

Obviously, Summer is the “prime time” for vegetable gardening in most places.  But ironically enough, it’s one of the worst times for other areas (like where I live), due to the heat and humidity.   Some vegetables prefer cooler weather, so they may be sown early or late in the season.  Other veggies like it hot, and can be grown in the heat of the summer.  So get to know your vegetables a bit, so you know the best time to plant.

Some “hot summer” vegetables include:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers (especially chile peppers)
• Melons (OK, melons are fruits…but then again, tomatoes are also fruits!)
• Summer squash
• Cucumbers
• Pole Beans

Some that like slightly cooler weather include:

• Broccoli
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Cabbage
• Winter squash

Obviously, that’s not a complete list, but these are some of the most popular for home vegetable gardening. You might want to check out the when to plant vegetables post for more information.