Home Vegetable Garden – How Do You Grow Your Own Vegetables At Home?
Monday, August 31st, 2009 at
12:23 pm
Tell me in short about your food gardening methods. With summer coming around, this is the perfect time to start a home vegetable garden.
Filed under: Vegetable Gardening
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I use a combination of vertical gardening and organic gardening to grow my own vegetables. Lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, peas, onions and beet — I’ve grown them all at home.
I’ve been into vertical gardening for the past 8 years and teamed up with my husband who’s been an organic farmer for 21 years.
Our methods work in tandem: A vertical garden helps you grow vegetables in a limited space (using window sill tubs or wooden towers) while organic gardening saves you the cost of pesticides.
the square foot gardening system
grow a lot in little space
My vegetable gardening methods are based on The Square Foot Gardening Method by Mel Bartholomew.
Try reading Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholowmew.
Also try: http://www.squarefootgardening.com
…for everything you need to know about propagating, cultivating and harvesting including choosing which vegetables to grow; crop yield calculating; seeding, planting-out & harvesting times; companion planting & crop rotation; bedding lay out; soil composition (how to make your own)…etc.
The Square Foot Method is VERY efficient with space and effort needed to grow vegetables. Almost guaranteed success (if you don’t plant it, It wont grow)… The SF Method is EASY for beginners to grasp and adaptable for small gardens; though these things are just as appealing to more experienced gardeners as well.
Very informative and motivational. Mel is a great teacher ! I can’t praise him and his book enough!
Good Luck!
first of all do you life in a house and have a good size backyard if so then go to a rental store and rent yourself a tiller and some fertilizer (bag of cow dung) but first work the ground and then put in the fertilizer (you might need 2 to 3 bags depending on the size of the bag) you can find these at your local garden store. While at the garden store go to where they sell the seeds and check out the seeds and make sure that you read the back of each packets to see if your area is right for planting the seeds.
If you want a head start on planting then what you need to do is grow the vegetables in your home by doing this when you buy the seeds buy some small it’s hard to explain they almost look like ice trays but a little bit deeper they have about 6 to 8 they are usually sold where the flower pots are sold, well anyways buy them about 3 to 4 depending on how much veggies you are on planing on planting then get a bag of soil put the soil into the containers then make a hole with your finger and put in a seed and cover the seed and add some water incubation usually lasts about 4 to 6 weeks and at that time that’s when you should start working on the ground for your garden. Oh i forgot to mention make sure that the seedlings get plenty of sunlight and water (do not over water).
Now here comes the fun part of getting dirty when the seedling start to sprut about 2 to 3" above the soil take the whole canteiners outside and befor you plant them (make sure to take the spruts out of the containers) by usuing a garden trowel (like a tiny shovel) dig a hole about 4 to 6" now take out the plant (leave it in the soil, just break the container around it and plant it soil and all and cover it up (repeat for the next and so on) The real job comes on after you plant the seedlings you have to hoe and water and take out the weeds and when the veggies get bigger then you have to put some insectacide on them to kill the bugs (and keep not kill the small critters out of your garden) and when they are fully mature pick, wash, prepare and enjoy
The perfect time to start a garden where I live was last October. I start by roto-tilling up the area that will be my garden. I then wait 2 weeks and do it again and another 2 weeks for a final till. This will kill the bermuda grass and many other perennial weeds. Oct is also a good month here to start a compost bin with all the leaves available. Make up as much compost as possible. You will never have too much. Leaves are excellent as well as green grass clippings if they are from a place that doesn’t use chemicals. Just about any organic matter is good as long as it is not from animal parts like meat etc.
In the spring you want to till your garden one more time and till the compost into it. If you have not made compost you can buy it. Four inches deep all over the garden is optimal. If you have trouble hauling that much buy peat moss in the bales. I use 1 bale of peat moss with about 3 bags of sheep manure.
Some vegetables like onions and potatoes should be planted about 3 or 4 weeks before the last average freeze date for your area. Others like tomatoes,peppers, basil etc. you must wait till after the last freeze.
I like to make rows in my garden and plant the transplants on the bottom of the row so it will be easier to water later on. Most people plant on the top of the row and the advantage is the plants get warmed faster in early spring. Around here the top row gardens get burned faster in summer because it is very hot here. We have short growing season here because of the summer heat. We must get the plants planted int the garden as soon as possible or they will die in the heat just as they are coming into production.
Be sure to cage your tomatoes and grow your vine type plants on a trellis.
I never use any kind of chemicals in my garden other than something like Safer Soap which is an organic soap mixed with water. That is for insects. If there are way too many insects that means that something is not right like growing the plants in the wrong season or area. Or maybe the roots were injured when transplanted. I have more vegetables than I know what to do with. I give them to family and friends and donate them to food banks.