17 Key Vegetable Gardening Tips For Beginners

Starting a kitchen garden can appear to be a frightening task, but don’t think your inexperience means you can’t have an excellent garden this year! Vegetable gardening is one of the simplest ways to urge started for beginners.

Most veggies are annual plants. meaning they live for less than one season and need to be replanted the subsequent year. Once you get your first frost within the fall, the plants will die and you won’t need to worry about them anymore.

Vegetable gardening is extremely rewarding especially if you plant the proper plants. Homegrown food is different from store-bought food, which are some things that are much easier to ascertain when you’re wont to homegrown veggies and return to store-bought.

Getting started with vegetable gardening isn’t a sophisticated process, and since I’ve been growing my very own food for several years, I assumed it might be nice to collect the simplest tips for vegetable gardening for beginners.

VEGETABLE GARDENING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS:

1. CHOOSE the proper LOCATION.

This makes the highest of the list because if you select the incorrect location for your garden, then you’re bound to have disappointing results. Most summer veggies love the sun, so choose a location that gets a minimum of 6 hours of sunlight during the day.

Don’t forget that you simply got to have a source of water located nearby to form watering convenient for you. A drip irrigation system that connects to a spigot is the easiest method to water your kitchen garden.

2. CHOOSE VEGETABLES APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR AREA

If you’re within the US, you’ll use a map like this one to assist you to identify what grows well in your area. More importantly, knowing the length of your season (find that here) is additionally helpful.

On your seed packet, you ought to see a variety of days to maturity. confirm your season is longer than that!

Learn a touch about the sort of veggie you would like to grow before you plant your garden. Cold tolerant plants like broccoli and kale will turn bitter if you grow them through the warmth of the summer.

For many plants, heat will make them taste bad and attend flower sooner (which also changes the flavor). If I attempt to grow lettuce in my garden within the summer, it gets a milky discharge that tastes really nasty!

We choose lettuce for fall and early spring plantings and avoid the summer crop for this reason.

3. KEEP IT on the brink of WHERE YOU SPEND tons of your time 

Place your garden in almost the world where you spend tons of your time already. Gardens that get tons of attention do better, so placing your garden where you already tend to spend time makes it easy to recollect to finish garden tasks.

4. CHOOSE EASY TO GROW VEGETABLES

Some veggies are easier to grow than others. Among the simplest vegetables to grow are onions, garlic, potatoes, and lettuce.

5. PICK VEGGIES you’ll WANT TO EAT

A common mistake that new gardeners make is planting things that you simply don’t want to eat. It’s such a waste to observe a wonderfully edible plant wither and die from neglect.

You’re much less likely to travel out and harvest your crop if you’ve got no desire to eat it, so save your energy for your favorite fruits and veggies.

6. PLANT ENOUGH BUT NOT TOO MANY PLANTS

It’s important to possess a sensible idea of what percentage of plants you would like per person. Remember to believe how often you eat these vegetables in your family and be realistic about what proportion preserving you’ll accomplish.

A lot of first-time gardeners aren’t trying to grow food for a whole year. Maybe you only want to grow enough food to eat fresh veggies throughout the summer. therein case, don’t overdo it!

7. USE MULCH FOR WEED CONTROL

Mulching is one of the foremost important things to try to to in your garden. Spreading mulch won’t only decrease your fight with weeds but will help the soil retain moisture and reduce watering needs through the summer

8. confirm TO PLANT AT the proper TIME

Most plants are going to be planted in spring just after your last frost and again in fall a couple of weeks before your first frost. There are many vegetables that take 90-120 days to supply fruit.

Before you plant, confirm you’re checking that there’s still time for your plants to mature. I prefer using spreadsheets to assist me to figure planting dates.

9. FOR HEALTHIER SOIL, COMPOST FIXES EVERYTHING

If you’re concerned about the health of your soil, you’ll always add compost. When it involves soil amendments, there’s no such thing as an excessive amount of compost, and it can’t harm anything.

10. you ought to KEEP A JOURNAL

Keeping notes about your garden during a journal is one of the simplest ways to actually grow as a gardener. you would like to understand how certain plants neutralize your garden, what you probably did that worked well, and what you probably did that didn’t work.

Your journal is often as simple as a spiral notebook, just confirm it’s many spaces for planning, drawing, making notes, and thinking of the latest ideas.

11. IT’S BETTER TO WATER DEEPLY THAN MORE FREQUENTLY

In a kitchen garden, an excessive amount of water are often even as bad as insufficient. Drenching your plants can leach nutrients out of the soil resulting in less flavorful produce.

It’s better to line your garden up with drip irrigation or a soaker hose so you’ll provide water mainly to the bottom and roots of the plant. It’s hard to mention how often you’ll need to water because it varies tons counting on your weather, but with deep watering, your plants are often content with longer between waterings.

12. RAISED BEDS AND CONTAINERS ARE OFTEN EASIER

If you’re trying to find tips for gardening with less work, then containers need to be the thanks to going. With a container, you’re not getting to struggle with weeds nearly the maximum amount, and preventing pests is easier, too.

With containers, you’ll need to water and fertilize more often, except for the foremost part, vegetables are easy to grow in containers.

13. DON’T BE AFRAID to start out FROM SEED

If the thought of seed starting indoors seems overwhelming you, why not just start your seeds directly within the garden? There are many sorts of vegetables that are easy to grow from seed.

Squash, watermelon, cucumbers, and beans are all very simple to grow from seed. In fact, it’s so simple that even your kids can grow a number of these plants all by themselves.

Watch the weather and prefer to plant on each day right before it’s set to rain for a couple of days. during a few days when the rain passes, leave in your garden and appearance for sprouts!

14. ADD VERTICAL GARDENING

If you’re short on space, choose plants that grow vertically. you’ll easily create more garden space with DIY vertical gardens and they’re easy and fun to feature to your existing garden plan.

15. BUY HEALTHY PLANTS

When you’re at the nursery, note of the health of the plants.

The leaves should be a healthy green color, not yellow

There should be no holes or pests on the leaves (look on the underside of leaves for eggs, too)

Avoid vegetable plants with flowers or fruit – on small plants, these can indicate that the plant is stressed

16. UNDERSTAND HOW FERTILIZER WORKS

Sometimes I hear vegetable gardeners mention growing great big plants but not getting tons of fruit. If this went on to you, then you’ll be using the incorrect quite fertilizer.

Products like Miracle-gro are formulated to supply large plants, but the high nitrogen content can cause low fruit production and blossom end rot.

17. PLAN AHEAD FOR THE HARVEST

When you’re just starting out it’s really exciting to ascertain all of your plants growing, but when the fruit starts to ripen, you would possibly feel overwhelmed with trying to spend all of your bounties.

Read abreast of the way to preserve all the fruits of your labor, and confirm you’ve got all of your canning supplies before time.

ONE FINAL THING TO REMEMBER…

Your garden should be an area where you enjoy spending time. If you discover there’s some aspect of gardening you don’t like, adjust the way you grow until you discover a way that works for you.

17 Key Vegetable Gardening Tips For Beginners

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