The Beginners Guide To The Perfect Vegetable Garden
Ready to start your own veggie garden and have no idea where to start? No problem! Luckily for you, Oz General Store is here to guide you!
Our guide is perfect for anyone looking to start or even rebuild their vegetable garden. You will be able to grow and enjoy your own home-grown veggies in no time with this quick guide. This guide will give you the best advise and guidelines to follow to ensure you get the best chance of a vegetable garden success.
Is It Worth Having a Home-Grown Vegetable Garden?
Short answer: Yes!
The positive affect of a home-grown vegetable garden is that the products can be untouched with chemicals or sprays, and can be grown with organic materials such as soil and garden maintenance, so there’s nothing processed or unnatural about them. Veggies that are organic and natural will give you that vibrant texture and sweet, juicy flavour that everyone loves!
First Step: Picking a Location
Picking a location for your vegetable garden is the key to being a successful veggie garden owner.
Here are some of our advice for a location:
- Select a location with a stable environment - Meaning avoid places that have a lot of people traffic and avoid areas with a lot of strong winds or any flooding in heavy rains.
- Plant in a sunny area – Most vegetables require 6 hours of at least direct sunlight per day if possible. Note: There are many vegetables that can still be happy in direct sunlight or partial shade.
- Pick a spot or purchase good soil – To help maintain your veggies you want to ensure you have moist soil so it helps retain nutrients and holds water long enough for it to grow.
Second Step: Choosing the Size of your Vegetable Garden
Unintentionally one of the most common mistakes with newbies and veggies gardens is over-planting and planting too much to for them to handle and maintain at once. Advice is “Start small and plant only what you will eat”.
Here are different planter ideas and advice:
- Pick a Planter – You have tons of options, including garden beds, raised garden beds, wooden planters, wall planters and vertical garden beds!
- Access to Plants – If you have chosen a garden bed of some sort remember to allow yourself space to get to the selected planted vegetables. Remember you want to be able to reach the centre of the bed or row depending on your size.
Third Step: Determining Which Vegetables To Plant
Some say this is the fun part; which vegetable do you choose for those future home cooked meals? The best way to choose what you grow is what you and your family like and will use a weekly basis to avoid any wastage - but remember, if you have spares you can give them to family or friends and share in the yumminess of homegrown veggies.
Remember to:
- Make a list of yes and no veggies - Choose what you and your family will eat and enjoy to avoid wastage.
- Time of year - Consider the season it is that you will be planting because some vegetables are seasonal
Here are some veggies that are ideal for beginners:
- Tomatoes
- Carrots
- Lettuce
- Zucchini
- Peppers
Fourth Step: Planting Your Vegetables
Yay! Now we're up to the fourth and final step of your veggie garden! This is where the fun part begins, by getting dirty by planting your veggies! There’s just a couple more things to remember now, such as where each vegetable will go and when each vegetable needs planting.
- Prepare the soil for planting
- When planting remember to turn the soil over with a gardening spade or fork. This will loosen the soil, and help the roots grow and spread.
- Plant the tall veggies in the area of garden bed that won’t shade the shorter veggies when in the sun.
- Remember to stagger your planting. You don’t want to example plant your lettuce all at once cause then it be ready all at once, plant a few days or a week later. Remember, there's no rushing a good veggie garden!
- Once planted, remember to water regularly and check on daily basis.
Congratulations to our new beginner veggie garden owners, as you are now ready to start!
More Advice and Tips
- Most vegetables are annuals meaning available all year round to plant, but there are some that are “Cool Season” veggies and “Warm Season” veggies. You should plant these just before or at the beginning of the selected season to get the best chance of growing them. Example – “Cool Season” veggies include spinach, lettuce and carrots, and “Warm Season” veggies include tomatoes, eggplants and cucumbers.
- If you do have shade over your veggies garden, don’t stress! Save them for the “Cool Season” vegetables, these vegetables will appreciate shade as the weather warms up.
- Crops mature at different times, so it's not a big deal if some are growing slower than others! Try and plant your veggies in line with when you'd like to harvest them (Note the seed packets your purchase generally have the “Days of Maturity” on them). Some vegetables have a short harvest time, such as bush beans for example, or other plants like tomatoes have longer period of harvest time.
Oz General Store is here to offer you the tools to build your first or rebuild your vegetable garden.
We offer you the best price on building tools such as hammers and saws, and gardening tools like spades and forks. We've got everything required to have and maintain a successful veggie garden.
If this article was helpful, we would love to hear from you or welcome to send through your veggie garden picture as we love to see it and we be happy to share on our page your amazing hard work.
If you have any further questions please send as an email at sales@ozgeneralstore.com.au and we would love to help you out.