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184 - Home Vegetable Gardening
from:Home vegetable gardening means different things to people – for some it is an economic necessity to grow your own vegetables, for others, growing vegetables is an enjoyable hobby. But is my soil up to growing vegetables? You might ask – in fact even the very worst soil can be coaxed to give a good yield. There are four important factors to bear in mind, for all gardening, and especially for home vegetable gardening. In order to harvest a healthy crop of vegetables you need to pay particular attention to the conditions of the soil.
* All gardens need food – rich soil is full of plant food
* Cultivation
* Temperature
* Moisture
If you are undertaking home vegetable gardening then you need to recognize that no soil remains naturally rich, growing things depletes the soil of some of its natural elements. Soil is made or kept rich by constant attention – cultivation – this helps to change the raw plant food in the soil into available forms. The gardener interested in home vegetable gardening also needs to add manure and plant food to the soil from outside sources. Gardeners also need to establish which part of the garden gets the most sun and therefore has the highest temperature. Plants, be they flowers, trees, fruit or vegetables need the warmth of the sun if they are to achieve healthy growth. Finally, all gardens need plenty of moisture and this means regular watering to ensure that the moisture goes to the roots of the plants.
Home vegetable gardening means finding the best possible spot for growing vegetables has well worked up and fed soil, which is exposed to light and warmth and has good drainage. First of all you need to decide what you are going to plant and where. Those plants which grow year after year, rhubarb, for example should be kept together at one end of the vegetable plot. Then there are things like carrots and onions that you get all season and they should be kept together. Then there are other crops, peas or lettuce for example, depending on the space you have left. Check out garden catalogues for instructions on sewing the seeds etc, note it down next to your choices of vegetables – you save yourself endless hours chasing details if you do this.
If you only have a small space then your home vegetable gardening is likely to be intensive – that is to say closely sown. The best vegetables to grow like this are lettuce, asparagus, carrots, beet, swiss chard cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes and kale. The best time for planting vegetables is late spring and this should produce a crop in the summer although carrots, cauliflower and beet can be seeded in June and flower in October-November.
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