Planning Your Own Vegetable Garden

Written on May 14, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Home & Garden

vegetables Within the next five years, my boyfriend and I are planning on buying our first home. While talking about the home of our dreams and about what a luxury it will be to not have to ask a landlord if we can paint the walls, hang up pictures and change the carpet in our rooms, he mentioned that he would love to have a garden.

Now first of all, my boyfriend is very much unlike most guys you will meet–He loves to decorate, he has an eye for what colors and fabrics look best on me and he has a knack for cleaning the house a whole lot better than I could! I am a very lucky woman to have somehow attracted my very own straight gay man.

While thinking about this garden that he would love to have, we talked about not only having fresh flowers we wouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, but also our very own produce; which of course, with the rising cost of gas to get to the store and the twenty percent increase in food prices that have hit America hard, having our very own vegetables would be a dream!

Being the dedicated blogger that I am, I thought I would share some information I picked up on how to make the thought of your very own vegetable garden a reality.

Like any major endeavor you plan to take on, a vegetable garden takes planning. You can’t just go out to your yard, pick a corner and start planting, you need to take into consideration how much sunlight your crops need, how many different varieties of vegetables you will be growing and where everything is going to go.

Vegetables have very particular needs unlike any other plants. Your vegetables required deep, fertile soil, a level ground and six hours of full sun every day at the very least. You also need to take into consideration that raised beds are better for growing vegetables because they have good draining, which rids your vegetables of disease and suffocation of the root systems. Raised beds also warms the soil a lot quicker than a regular bed and of course, since vegetables need six hours of full sunlight daily, they could use all the warmth they can get!

It is much easier to sketch your plan out on paper before you begin to plant. Decide what vegetables will go where as well as the size of the beds you will need. The best type of paper for this endeavor would be graph paper so you can plan to scale and also make sure you know how big your crops will grow so you can make sure that they are spaced out properly and not overlapping onto each other.

To make the raised beds that I mentioned earlier, mark off the bed layout with string and bamboo stakes. Make sure that your beds are not wider than 36 to 40 inches and using a shovel, carve out a series of lowered paths around the staked-off areas. Then, mound the soil onto the beds and use a rake to level the soil.

If you currently have your own vegetable garden, tell me about it in the comments, I could surely use all the help I can get and if you’re feeling really adventurous, take some pictures and send them to me using the contact form.

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12 Responses »

  1. Mandy on May 14th, 2008 at 4:13 am

    Hi I’m on your friends list on Diggs. :) I have several vegetable gardens in my back yard. They are all organic. No chemicals are ever put on my plants or veggies.

    I grow green beans,onions,tomatoes,all sorts of peppers,a few varieties of squash,tons of different herbs,radishes,strawberries,cabbage,and lettuce.

    I do a lot of container gardening too. Which is fun and very easy. I have raised beds in two spots. I put fencing around them today to keep the rabbits out. Even if you live in the city you can expect animals digging into your gardens.

    With organic gardening you have to stay on top of everything. I was just out in the gardens here in the middle of the night trying to figure out what kind of bug was chewing on my bean plants lol.

    Spend a lot of time reading up on what you want to grow. I would highly advise sticking with organic gardening. Maybe for your first year start out with two raised beds & some containers until you get the hang of things. Good luck and have fun!

  2. Web Mumble on May 15th, 2008 at 4:32 am

    It’s been raining a ton here lately, and when it gets warmer we were planning to build an organic veggie garden in the back yard. We’ll have to use this as a guide!

    Web Mumbles last blog post..Are You Serious? Mugshot Hall Of Fame

  3. Really Funny Stuff on May 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    I do have a house in a country so I too have a great garden without any of that evil things called chemicals! Natural Growth Thumb Up ! ;)

  4. Joe Takkle on May 15th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    My first though on seeing “decorate” and “colors” was, “that poor woman, she has a gay man,” but you acknowledged that he is a straight, gay man, so congrats, I guess.

    While you are in an apartment, herb gardens are always a simple start: easy to care for, produce what you need, can be adorned with little army men for ambiance. I don’t have a vegetable garden, although I do have a number of fruit producing trees, and the best advice I can give is make sure you keep an eye on them, and on the critters living in your yard. With our mango tree, we are at a constant battle over the fruit with the squirrels, and actually our dogs as well, over the fruit. As with vegetables, just check on them, and if you have an animal menace, come up with harmless distractions, like bird seed feeders so the products of your labor are spared.

  5. Bape on May 15th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    I have my own veggie garden indoors in my house and its a wonderful hobby! Yielding the fresh vegetables for dinners is the best part of it!

  6. Brenda on May 15th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    What a great post! :) I think that raised beds are awesome and it makes it so much easier to garden. And planning out your garden is a MUST! It makes things so much nicer and makes it easier to rotate crops as needed each year.

  7. HerEnhancement on May 16th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    I love gardening. It’s so fun and enjoyable. Nothing like kicking back with a nice glass of wine and look at your harvest. Then the food is just so great and you love it that much more.

  8. White Noise on May 17th, 2008 at 7:22 am

    What do you plan to grow in your veggie garden?

    I’d love to own a whole gargantuan avocado plantation but it takes a whopping five years for a tree to begin bearing fruit. Fart.

  9. Shawna on May 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    I sadly live in an apartment in the city, so I really can’t have a garden, but I read an article just recently saying that you should intertwine your plants so pest so eat all your veggies.

    For example intermingle vegetables, herbs and flowers all in the same garden bed to prevent pests that might pray on vegetables. If there is only one vegetable plant with an herb and a flower to the sides of it, the pests won’t want to move to the next plant, limiting the spread throughout your garden.

    Shawnas last blog post..not so secret-secrets

  10. Alex Tiller on May 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    This is a great post. You will find some other helpful gardening tips at http://www.weekendgardener.net/.

    Alex Tiller
    http://blog.alextiller.com

    Alex Tillers last blog post..Buy Fresh, Buy Local

  11. X-MC on May 19th, 2008 at 10:02 pm

    Reading through this post put a smile on my face… until I realized I’m in Vegas in 105* heat. No gardening for me this year. :) Very enjoyable read! Thank you!

  12. Clanny on May 20th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    I love gardening pins, although it is difficlut to get seeds sometimes. Anyway, nice reading, will surely take that into account

    Clannys last blog post..AMD Intros New 3-D Graphics Card for Imaging Professionals

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