Gardening Tips Articles

One outdoor hobby that can be rewarding is vegetable gardening and the type and amount of plants you tend can help with meal planning throughout the year. Different plants have different times to reach maturity and some will require different spacing, but they all require food, water and air. Making sure they receive all of their needs as well as have a means of being pollinated can insure success in your attempts at vegetable gardening.

One of the common crops for vegetable gardening is sweet corn, planted in rows about 18-inches apart. While they will sometimes grow well in small lots, three rows of about two dozen stalks will insure proper pollination allowing them to grow large, succulent kernels. While corn is a difficult crop to weed, vegetable gardening should be more about the productivity of the plants and less about the manual labor needed to get them to grow.

Many different types of tomatoes can be planted when vegetable gardening and they can be used for sandwiches, made into tomato sauce or eaten fresh off the vine. A traditional blend of fertilizer will usually provide all the food tomatoes require but for a juicier crop when vegetable gardening, they must receive sufficient water and sun to grow into large ripe orbs.

First Time Planters Should Follow Directions

Many seed plants, such as beans, peas and cucumbers all have planting directions on the package and regardless of how easy you think they are to grow, successful vegetable gardening is more than shoving a seed in to the soil and hoping for the best. That is why all seed packages offer tips on how far apart to plant the rows and how deep to plant the seeds. Failing to follow these simple instructions may place the plants too far apart for pollination or too close together to give their root the room they need to grow.

Some types of tomatoes, for example can grow plants over eight-feet tall and three to four feet in diameter. If they are planted less than the recommended four-feet apart, they can be difficult to maintain and end up with one plant choking the other. With vegetable gardening, it is important the plants have the room to grow and less competition for the food in the ground.

Beans, peas, carrots and some of the leafy plants can be arranged when vegetable gardening to offer not only prime growing conditions but also a good looking patch of plants. However, taller plants should be placed further from the line of the sun to insure the shorter plants receive an appropriate amount of sunlight for growth.

Whether you plant flowers, vegetables or both working outside gardening can be a relaxing experience. Although at times it can seem like back-breaking labor, but in the end when the flowers are blooming and the vegetables are ready to be harvested, gardening can offer rewards like few other activities. In the first weeks when your seeds are still under the ground, it may seem like all your work preparing the soil was for nothing, but from the time the first sprouts start poking up through the ground, all the hard work is forgotten.

However, just because the plants are beginning to show signs of life does not mean the work is over. Your efforts have probably produced some pretty good soil and the flowers or vegetables are not the only things liking the surrounding. Weeds add another dimension to your gardening efforts and many of those will grow bigger and faster when you pay less attention to them.

Depending on the size of the plots you put in the ground, gardening has a profound affect on the appearance of your yard. Flowers can provide bursts of color throughout the area and help brighten otherwise dull corners of the yard. A few raised flower beds scattered around a large yard can help visually break up the area and reduce the amount of grass cutting you have to do…leaving more time for weeding.

Eating What You Grow Is a Wonderful Experience

There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh vegetables and no matter how good the produce department is in your favorite store, vegetables start to die the minute they are picked. Your gardening efforts can offer the freshest vegetables possible as you pick them clean them and eat them.

Growing you own tomatoes and peppers and turning them into spaghetti sauce can be a lot of work, but the end product is your own and nothing can beat the taste of homemade tomato sauce when it is done right. Your gardening work can produce a winter’s worth of food during a typical growing season in an average size garden.

There is no doubt that gardening is a lot of work as it starts in the early spring when the soil needs prepared and loosened to allow the roots room to grow once the seeds sprout. Throughout the season you will be watering and weeding and watching everything grow to maturity and then you get to pick it and pack it or eat, right from the vine.

Now that there are so many different news stories about bad food such as lettuce and such being sold in restaurants and grocery stores, it is amazing that more people are not taking advantage of economic gardening in order to get at least some of their fruits and veggies. Depending on where in the country you live, of course you are going to be limited to certain types of food which you can grow but you should be able to have enough of a selection to get you started in economic gardening.

A lot of people automatically assume that you need not only a lot land to plant a garden, but a lot of experience, and a lot of money too. But that is simply not the case at all. There are several great sources on the Internet, in the library, and in books at your local book store which can provide you with tip after tip on how to grow your own fruits and veggies. These references can also serve, as an excellent place to get some highly needed information on how to approach your venture of economic gardening.

The Downside Of Economic Gardening

With all of the plus sides for economic gardening, it is hard to imagine that there is anything that could be on the negative side. But when thinking hard about it I can only really think of one and that is that you will have to work hard at your garden, no matter if it is large or small, as any garden needs love, care, and plenty of attention. There are many tasks to be done within any garden and when going with economic gardening, you are going to be very cautious about what tools you bring into your garden as not all are considered to be for very economic gardening.

Other then that, there really is not much to put on the negative side of the list. There are many more benefits to gain from economic gardening and usually you will only see the true benefits after you put your plan into action and see what is produced. After your first economic gardening adventure, you may never get your veggies another way ever again. Your friends and family will be at your door for their shopping needs instead of being down at the local market. So go ahead, research and see what exactly you can grow in your area and get started. The sooner the better and you will not be sorry about the labor involved.

For a lot of people, there just is not enough time throughout the year to plant and grow the garden that they would really like to have. And this is often caused by their location in the country as a lot of parts have snow on the ground for a good bit of the year.

But something that not too many people consider is winter gardening. Winter gardening is something that has been done for many years but is not something that comes to mind for many when gardening is mentioned. But, believe it or not, winter gardening happens a lot and it may be even happening right now in your neighbor’s home.

Winter gardening is done basically during the winter months as one may assume and it is done within the comfort of your home or another building that you may have. Some people even have separate storage houses or winter gardening buildings set up so that they may continue to grow their plants all year long.

This works out well for those people who have to rely on their own resources to get them through the winter. Winter gardening is what gets a lot of the population who resides in the middle of nowhere through some of the roughest of the winter months.

Cons of Winter Gardening

Unlike during the summer months, there is not enough heat to naturally keep the plants alive and growing. So when attempting winter gardening, one must supplement the natural light and heat that the plants would have during the summer months.

The gardener must make sure that he or she completely reads up on winter gardening and must make sure that the right amount of heat and light are given. Too much or not enough of something can make for terrible results and a lot of wasted food and time.

Winter gardening takes not only a lot of energy out of you but also a lot of money out of your wallet sometimes as the energy costs for heating and lighting the building cannot be cheap. But, if you are simply growing a small garden in your home, the expenses of the heat and light may not be so bad and still be beneficial to you. Winter gardening can be not only a good way to supply yourself and others with food, but also a good way to get your exercise in during those cold months when usually you relax more.

Most gardeners use some type of fertilizer to ensure that their soil contains an adequate amount of minerals and nutrients to provide their gardens with enough food to grow healthy plants. In fact, fertilizer is so widely used that a single gardening center may carry several varieties to accommodate individual gardening needs.

But buying fertilizer can be expensive, especially if you have a large garden. The good news is that you can make your own fertilizer by starting a compost heap. By doing your own gardening composting, you will have unlimited compost year round.

Read all of: Gardening Composting: Why and What to Compost