Beginner Gardening--Starting with Vegetable Gardening Basics
Learning beginner gardening is the first step on a journey that will fill you with anticipation, excitement, and satisfaction. You will spend winter hours thinking about what you would like to grow in your very own backyard garden or perhaps a container garden, come spring.
You will very likely pore over seed catalogues, looking at different varieties and their properties. Which one produces a heavy yield? Which one takes heat better? Will it grow in my climate zone? Does it take up a lot of space? Does it keep well?
There are many different aspects of each type of vegetable that can affect the best choice for your garden.
Once you obtain your seeds, you will carefully read the packets to determine the planting depth for the seeds, their frost hardiness, the time to harvest, and other important information.
When the time is right, you will plant your seeds into the well prepared soil, water the soil carefully, and then the waiting begins.
Even though I've had a garden most of my life, I still run outside in the spring to see what has come up in the garden today.
The anticipation of seeing those little seeds sprout and burst forth out of the soil, gradually unfurling their tiny leaves to the warmth of the spring sunshine, is a special joy each year.
Soon they will become the plants you've dreamed of, thriving in your very own garden.
Advantages to Growing a Garden
Homegrown tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, radishes, and other vegetables will taste so much better when picked from your own garden. You will know that they are the freshest they can be. They will have ripened before picking, so their flavor will be fully developed.
All the nutients will be at their peak when you pick them, so they will be there in abundance too.
Once you've experienced the satisfaction of growing your own tomatoes, you will probably always try to keep at least a few tomato plants.
The difference in flavor between the vine ripened grown at home, and what is available at the store, is so vast, it is indescribable.
Pepper varieties, bean varieties, and other vegetables can be grown that are not available in most stores. Some don't hold well for shipping, others are an ethnic favorite or just are not commercially grown for other reasons.
You can choose the ones you would like to try, and not be limited to the commercial varieties.
So, before you get lost in those seed catalogues, lets take a look at what you need to know and do when beginner gardening.
There are some things you will need to learn, and others you will need to think about, making some observations before you begin.
Planning ahead will serve you well later. There are important factors that must be taken into consideration before beginning a garden.
Finally, think about how much time you can devote to a garden. If you find yourself about to leave on vacation, you might want to contact a home and yard service to arrange for your garden to be watered and weeded while you are gone.
Gardening terms that you will need to get familiar with will be covered on the next page.
You will learn about things like zones, mulch, ph of soil, loamy, sandy, or clay soil, and what proper soil should have for best results.
For a beginner, gardening aids and tools may not be familiar. We will look at the different types of tools for digging, weeding, leveling and harvesting your vegetables.
Help for soils that need a little work will also be covered and discussed.
What is Compost? This is another term you might want to investigate. Not only is it helpful to a garden, it is also an earth friendly way to use the bits and pieces in your kitchen left over from preparing meals to recycle into your garden.
This reduces waste in landfills and provides nutrients that will be taken up by your new plants.
You can also find some great beginner information on gardening at a friend's site:
Vegetable Garden Basics
where you can "Learn how to grow a Vegetable Garden the easy way! Quit eating that pretty cardboard from supermarkets that they have the audacity to call vegetables".
