Starting a Vegetable Garden

You may find that you can even earn extra money with your vegetable garden. It's a simple matter to grow a lot more than you can consume and preserve, so you'll have extra to sell at a farmer's market or from your own roadside stand. There's a excellent chance that local restaurants and health food stores would be interested in purchasing your bounty.

The size of your vegetable garden is one of the very first decisions to be made. Much depends on how much time you have for gardening and how much labor you are able to put into it. When you're doing this introductory "gardening in your head" exercise, you'll want to buy lots of different vegetables in a complete range of varieties. If you haven't grown vegetables before, you may be amazed at the amount of work involved. Don't plan more than you can handle at the beginning.

Listing all the vegetables you may want to grow is a good way to start out. At this point you can consider anything you want. This is vegetable brainstorming and all ideas are good ideas. Later on there will be enough time to figure out what you can afford and what you have time to care for. Give your mind free reign to create the vegetable garden of your dreams. But don't just imagine it. Make sure you actually put something down on paper.

Once you have your list, you can start to narrow down your choices. Investigate which vegetables can be bought locally. For example, if locally-grown cabbage or corn is readily available in your area, then there's probably no reason for you to plant them. You probably can't improve much over the taste or bring down the cost by growing them yourself.

This should leave you with a list of vegetables that either aren't available locally, are just a little too pricey to buy regularly, or would taste a lot better if you could grow them. Herbs are an excellent example of edible plants on which you can nearly always economize by growing them yourself.

It seems as though almost everyone has tomatoes in their home vegetable garden. It's simply not possible to buy a tomato from a store that tastes as good as one freshly picked from your own vine. While we're in the salad section, specialty lettuce is another great choice. When you grow fancy lettuce at home, you can serve it all you want without thinking about how much it costs.

There's no way to bypass the fact that vegetable gardens involve some hard work. At times the labor can be relaxing. But when it's really hot, or when you're simply not in the mood, the work can be brutal. In case you hadn't thought it through, there will be dirt and bugs involved.

Regret is most common when people try to create a garden that is too big. Planning for more than you can cover will change a pleasurable hobby into a nightmare of work. Once you've started it, the garden won't wait for you to get in the mood. Things must be done when they need to be done. Don't take these cautions the wrong way, just narrow your list of vegetables down to something you know you can manage.

Here's another bit of advice--planting something you don't like to eat is just silly. Adapt your choices based on your personal preferences, not according to what looks good in the seed catalog. Unless you intend to sell the surplus, try to avoid planting too much.

Producing your own vegetables is both rewarding and relaxing. Growing your own produce at home is the best way to supply yourself with nutritious, great tasting food. Realistic planning and an analysis of what's available locally will guarantee that your vegetable garden will be a positive experience and become an annual tradition.