Planting Your First Vegetable Garden?

If you have decided this is the year you are finally going to get a vegetable garden in, start preparing now. Start with a small garden, you can always expand your plot but you don’t want to exhaust or disappoint yourself by going too big too soon.

Plant what you like. If you cook a lot of Italian dishes then go for tomatoes, oregano, sweet peppers. Try a salad garden with a variety of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. Plant peppers in large pots then partially sink them into the garden, when the temperature drops you can pull them out and take them indoors, they will last months longer is a sunny spot. Want vegetables through the winter with little work at preserves, plant peas and beans with a variety of herbs you can hang to dry.

A small garden with a variety of plants is a lot healthier than a large plot with rows of plants.

When you line all the plants up in rows you make them more susceptible to pest and disease. If a pest comes along and starts to munch on one of your tomato plants it will go right along the whole row chomping on each and destroying your full harvest. If you mix it up when the pest hops to the next plant it is not of its liking, it leaves and tries the next and then takes off for better pickings. Mix your veggies and herbs up just like you would a flower garden and the confused pests will take a far lower tole on your plants. A mixed up garden also looks a lot nicer than those boring rows. I call row planting Farm Gardening, farmers have to plant in long straight rows of the same type of vegetable because they use machines to plant, fertilize, and harvest. A nicely planned out vegetable garden looks as lovely as a well tended flower garden, and it is just as relaxing and calming a place to sit and relax.

So, choose well, start small and mix it up and you will have a lovely garden to enjoy your morning coffee in and healthy food on your table.