Starting Your First Vegetable Garden

By now we are all aware of all the bonuses that come from living a green lifestyle, not just the ones that help the environment but also the ones to make us healthier human beings. Not only are people learning to reduce, reuse and recycle but they are also more interested than ever before in exercising and eating right.  To that end, many of them have taken an interest in the health benefits of eating fresh vegetables and even growing their own in small homemade gardens.

One of the first things the experts suggest is that you start off with a reasonably sized plot of land to work with, especially if you're new to organic gardening.  Remember that there will be new techniques and things to learn here and you want to make sure the area that you are working with is manageable to start.  As you gain a fuller understanding of all the tools of the trade you'll be able to handle a bigger garden. It's suggested that you start out with a garden that is no bigger than 8 x 10.

The best spot for a vegetable garden is one that has a lot of southern exposure so that it will get as much as possible of the sun all day long. It's a good idea to plan the garden out before hand as well as on a piece of paper: that way you will get a good idea which vegetables you want to go in what positions and it's even possible to cut out plots from other pieces of paper and overlay them onto your garden so that you can change the positioning of different foods. Remember that only using a space in the garden isn’t usually enough do the trick.

You should never just leave the soil in lumps. Remember that large lumps of soil do not allow the roots of vegetables to properly penetrate and get the nutrients they need to grow. As well, no seed will grow in lumpy soil—they need to get close to the dirt in a finely mulched garden. So you will need to break up the lumps with the hoe and then rake the garden until the surface is smooth.

It's important to be careful when you choose the seeds for your garden as well. Often the ones that you get from businesses have been mixed inadvertently with other seeds and it becomes impossible to tell which ones are contaminated until you get them home. You’ll be able to see if the larger seeds are unclean while you’re at the store, but the smaller particles are almost impossible to detect. Here it’s also good to have a friend or neighbor that can pass along any helpful hints that they’ve learned.

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