The Essential Steps To Start A Successful Vegetable Garden
Modern life is fast but very stressful. Vegetable gardening is a great hobby, which could not only relax your mind and reduce the stress from day to day life but also reward you with fresh vegetables and save you a lot of money. The following is to show you the essential steps for how to build your vegetable garden.
Pick a Location
Choosing the location of your vegetable garden is very crucial. A good vegetable garden needs at least six-hour direct sunlight every day so that your food crops could get mature properly. As a thumb of rule, the soil for the site should be very draining and fertile. Although good air moving around your garden is quite important, you should avoid choosing your vegetable garden in windy areas now that winds could knock down or dry out your plants. Also, for convenience, pick a site near a water supply and avoid using long hoses.
Prepare the Soil
Well prepared and fertilized soil is necessary for a good vegetable garden. However, as long as the soil is well-drained and supplied with organic matter, moisture-retentive, and reasonably free of stones, the exact sort of it is not that important. Keep in mind that the subsoil of your vegetable garden is also crucial. In general, hard shale, gravel beds, rock ledges, hardpan, or deep sand under the surface could make it very difficult or even impossible to develop garden soil.
The fertilizer used could be any good commercial plant food distributed at the rate of 3 – 4 pounds each thousand square feet. Usually, infertile soil could often benefit from higher proportions of fertilization; however, you should pay attention to avoid adding too much fertilizer to it.
Choose What To Grow
It goes without saying what to grow depends on what your family likes to eat. If your family would like to consume a large amount of one kind of vegetable, it should be more cost-effective to plant from seeds. Otherwise, it is best to buy bedding plants so that the growing season is long enough for the maturity of your crop.
Test and Adjust the PH of Soil
Different vegetables require different degrees of soil acidity, which is typically measured by pH; therefore, you should test and adjust the pH of soil for your vegetable garden. Soil with a pH of less than 7.0 is acid; on the other hand, the one with a pH of more than 7.0 is alkaline. After determining the pH, you could amend the soil to the right degree of acidity needed.
All in all, as long as you follow these essential steps to start it, you should be in the right direction for a successful vegetable garden.