How to Grow a Vegetable Garden . To start, the easiest vegetables to grow, from sowing to managing flower beds. Traditional or raised vegetable garden. Advice for those who want to grow a vegetable garden on a terrace or balcony.
Growing a garden is an easy and rewarding activity, both a hobby and a great source of food. It is a popular pastime that will not only save you money on groceries but also offers an opportunity to eat healthily, naturally and truly organically .
Too many people do not eat enough vegetables, setting up a vegetable garden could combat this problem. Growing a vegetable garden is a way to ensure savings and well-being, inducing your family to eat the amount of vegetables required. Farming is an activity that keeps you in close contact with nature, allows you to burn calories and cultivate great satisfaction. On this page we will see some advice for starting a vegetable garden from scratch, at home or in the garden.
How to grow a vegetable garden in your garden, on a terrace or balcony
The first thing to do is to find a space where we can set up our vegetable garden . The space chosen must be suitable for growing vegetables and greens , so it is important that there is a sufficient amount of sunlight, the ideal would be an area with a daily exposure of about 6-8 hours, although this is an indicative figure as the need for light varies based on the region of residence. The more optimal the position, the more likely the vegetable garden will be to flourish!
It doesn’t matter if you intend to grow a vegetable garden in the open field, on a terrace or balcony, the main ingredients for growing a vegetable garden are:
- sun,
- little wind,
- soil that does not allow water stagnation
- good quality seeds.
Growing a Vegetable Garden: Seeds and Sowing
As for seeds , these must be purchased from a trusted nursery. If you buy them in a supermarket, check the storage date and not the “expiration” date; seeds rarely have an expiration date but it must be said that if they are very old, they will hardly give life to good quality plants.
Once you have purchased the seeds, you can germinate them between damp paper towels or by placing them, together with wet cotton wool, in classic cardboard egg boxes. There are some vegetables that need to be sown by scattering, in this case preliminary germination will not be necessary: the seeds can be “scattered” on the growing medium. In addition, if the weather allows it and the temperatures are optimal for that particular cultivar, it will be possible to sow in the open field, spacing the seeds as required for planting adult plants. To recap, when it comes to sowing the vegetable garden , you have three main options:
- broadcast sowing
- sowing in rows
- sowing in holes
For all the information about the depth at which to bury the seeds, the sowing methods just listed, we refer you to the article ” How to sow in open ground or in a seedbed”.
Sowing and potted garden
Even those who grow vegetables in pots (on the balcony or terrace) can choose between different sowing methods. It does not necessarily have to go through cell containers and indoor sowing. If the containers are large enough (such as rectangular planters), you can even sow by scattering!
Broadcast sowing is well suited to rocket, lettuce, parsley and many aromatic herbs.
Growing the garden: the soil
The vegetable garden can be started on the terrace or in the garden, in the open field or in pots. In any case, it is advisable to use soil enriched with compost. As an alternative to compost, artificial fertilizers could be used, although with the composting strategy, much of the waste produced in the kitchen could be disposed of.
Vegetable Garden: How to Make the Soil Fertile
Soil management is profoundly different between those who grow vegetables in pots and those who do it in the garden. In open fields, preliminary soil preparation work will be necessary, especially if that land has never been used for growing vegetables or has even been trampled on for a long time and is therefore full of hard clods. In these circumstances, you will need to arm yourself with a hoe (or rototiller) and follow our guide dedicated to How to make soil fertile .
Potted garden, the soil
To start, choose a soft universal soil. Unlike growing ornamental plants, growing a vegetable garden in a pot is seasonal, so you won’t need to repot. To start, buy very large pots directly or use boxes with drainage holes. To grow a vegetable garden at home (on a balcony or terrace) you have to pay close attention to the irrigation water, you risk excessively alkalinizing the soil using tap water, so organize yourself with rainwater to collect in basins.
How to Grow a Vegetable Garden: Potatoes, Garlic and Onions
If you have bought potatoes from the greengrocer and have kept them at home for too long without eating them, you will undoubtedly have noticed the formation of small protrusions. Those annoying protrusions represent sprouts. At this point, do not throw the potatoes away but cut them with a knife, obtaining small pieces without damaging the sprouts.
The potato fragments thus obtained represent the beginning of your vegetable garden . Place them in fertile soil at a depth of at least 5 cm. Potatoes, depending on the climate of your area, can be planted from January to March.
Just like potatoes, garlic cloves that have a green sprout can be buried and cultivated; the same goes for onions. In this way you will obtain plants ready to grow at zero cost.
How to Grow a Vegetable Garden from Scratch, Tips for Beginners
Those who have little time available, or have never even looked after a succulent plant, can start a vegetable garden from scratch by starting to grow those vegetables that require little attention. In particular, you can start with:
- Tubers such as carrots, potatoes, garlic, onion, radishes…
- Leafy vegetables such as rocket, lettuce, escarole, chicory…
- Aromatic plants such as basil, rosemary, oregano…
- Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers.
- Artichokes, beans, fennel…
- Celery, watermelon, melon…
The instructions for growing these vegetables are contained in the Easy to grow vegetables page . We recommend that you start from here both for a vegetable garden in the garden and for growing a vegetable garden in a pot .
When to start a vegetable garden
The best time to start a vegetable garden is from late spring to early summer, in fact, with higher temperatures, it is possible to sow in the open field and have better germination times…. however it is always the good time to start a vegetable garden because there are cultivars that prefer lower temperatures. So, to answer the initial question, when to start growing a vegetable garden? The answer is… Now! Here are some guides that could be useful to understand which vegetables to start with and which vegetables to grow in the garden month by month.
How to make a raised bed garden
The raised bed consists of a patch of land placed higher than the ground level so that it can function almost in a similar way to a greenhouse. With a raised bed it is estimated that you can obtain harvests even three or four times higher than those obtained with the traditional garden. To find out how to make a raised bed, the advantages and methods of preparing the seedbed, we invite you to consult the page How to prepare a raised bed .
