Your Year Around Flower and Garden Guide
Vegetable Gardening Tips
New ways to a healthy lifestyle
- In general, vegetables require better soil and more water than flowers and
shrubs. Vegetables that are not grown in good conditions are often not very
tasty or get a watery or bitter taste.
- That said we can set up a few vegetable gardening tips, there is absolutely nothing like the taste of well-grown vegetables from your own garden. Home-grown tomatoes, carrots, cucumber and lettuce have a flavor you didn't even know existed when compared with store bought produce.
- And you have complete control over what and how you grow. This is where the
composting process we discussed earlier becomes of great value. Compost as
biological fertilizer improves the soil structure and the overall quality.
Rotate your Crops
Different vegetables have different needs and if grown in the same spot over several seasons will reduce the soil to the point that it will grow nothing. The thing to do is rotate your crops every season. Done correctly, each crop will fertilize the soil for the new type of plant.
When rotating, you should follow a root vegetable of potatoes or carrots with a legume such as peas or beans, then go for the cruciferous family of cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts etc. and from there to tomatoes or corn.
Don't plant tomatoes twice in the same path
Tomatoes especially should not be planted in the same patch twice as nematodes may result. These can be seen as bulbous growths on the roots of the tomato plant. Blossom end rot is a calcium deficiency in tomatoes characterized by a black circle on the blossom end of the tomato. It can be caused by too much dry weather, as calcium in the ground is water-soluble and cannot be absorbed by the plant unless there is adequate water.
Most vegetables require full sun to grow well, but peas, onions, beetroot, spinach and lettuce are five vegetables that will tolerate a little shade. Since they are gross feeders, vegetables don't do well under trees as tree roots use up many of the soils nutrients. However, herbs and flowers can grow happily along with your vegetables and indeed, often protect the other plants from bug attack or disease. This is called companion planting and must be looked into carefully, as certain vegetables do better with specific types of herbs or flowers.
What vegetables do we grow from seed and we do we go for Seedlings
When growing vegetables, they can be planted as seeds or purchased as seedlings. - How to choose
- Plants that have large seeds or whose seeds germinate quickly do well grown from
seed. These are peas, beans, broad beans, potatoes, corn, spinach and others.
Lettuce, carrot and radishes germinate quickly so that even though the seed is
fine, they grow easily from seed.
Tomatoes and lettuce are quite easy to grow from seed, yet are frequently purchased as seedlings. Always make sure your seedlings are a deep green and not leggy, wilted or yellow.
We hope to have improved your gardening experience with these vegetable gardening tips, stay tuned, more is to follow. secretively underground until harvest.
Find tips on growing vegetables in our Gardening Basics section. Use our Site Map or check our ever-growing Plants A to Z page to find even more information on your favorite vegetables.
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