Thinking of Installing a Vegetable Garden in Your Backyard? Here's What You Need to Know
Having fresh, delicious vegetables from your backyard doesn't have to be complicated. Installing a vegetable garden is about one of the easiest landscaping jobs you can think of. So what do you need to do when you finally decide to grow your own vegetables?
Choosing the Best Place
Before you make the final decision to install a vegetable garden, you need to ensure that you have an appropriate space for it. This is more than the physical space that the finished garden will take up, as it also needs to be in a place with ample sunshine. As a guide, fruiting vegetables will need around 8 hours of sunlight per day, root vegetables will need around 6 hours, and leafy vegetables can get by with around 4 hours of sunlight per day. So while you might have the space for the vegetable garden, the average daily sunlight in this part of your backyard might limit the types of vegetables you can grow.
Choosing the Look
Once you have decided that you do have an appropriate space for your vegetable garden, you need to decide how you want it to look. What does this mean? You might be perfectly content to simply dig a hole into your lawn and plant away, but you might also want an elevated garden that matches the other rock borders in your backyard. A gardening service company can help you with this type of project. Whether it's simply a hole in the ground or if it's an elevated rock bed, you will need to fill the hole with fertile potting mix. An elevated bed is easier in some respects since you don't need to remove a lot of the soil already on the ground. If you want an elevated vegetable garden with a minimum of fuss, then you can simply lay a wooden frame directly onto the grass. The frame needs to have an elevation that is sufficient for the lengths of the roots of the plants you wish to have. You then place a thick layer of newspaper over the grass and fill the frame with potting mix. Stake the frame into position for added stability. The garden can quickly and easily be removed if the need should ever arise.
Choosing the Plants
The fun part is next. Visit your local garden centre to buy seedlings for your vegetable garden. Of course you will want to choose vegetables that you and your family will enjoy eating, and the staff at the garden centre can offer you a few alternatives too. Pay attention to the care instructions included the the seedlings, which is usually found on a small label staked into the soil. This will tell you how much water the plant requires, and also gives you placement instructions. These instructions will tell you how far apart the plants need to be placed in the soil in order to maximise their yield.
Choosing Your Protection
Those delicious vegetables are being grown for you and your family, and yet there are some other creatures who might want to sample them. Given that your vegetable garden is unlikely to be too large, you can easily do away with toxic pesticides when it comes to deterring insects from your crops. Some chemical strength pesticides might occasionally be useful in the event of an infestation, but you can make do with organic pesticides for the most part. You can make these yourself and you know that they're not doing any damage to the environment.
In no time at all, your new vegetable garden will be providing you with delicious ingredients for your meals. The stuff from the supermarket will never taste quite as good again!