Setting up a vegetable garden is an enjoyable hobby that will in due time reward the gardener with a bounty of delicious vegetables. Whether your backyard is large or small it should not be hard to find a few vegetable garden design ideas that suit your property. When beginning your garden, start by drawing up some basic plans.
Placement
For a vegetable garden, the primary concerns are the size of the garden, the amount of available light, and irrigation. If this is your first garden, start off slow with a smaller plot. You can always expand the size next year after you see how things go. A 10×10 foot area should suffice for most home gardens. After deciding how big your garden will be, evaluate the amount of light that is available in your yard. Make note of where the sun rises and sets and orient your garden so that it receives as much light as possible. Most vegetables grow the best when exposed to 8 to 10 hours of direct sunlight. Finally, take note of how water drains in your yard. You are going to want to avoid placing the garden in a low spot in your yard because all the runoff from your house and the rest of the yard could over-saturate the plants.
Construction
Digging your garden is the most labor intensive and difficult part of the process. Begin the fall before you want to start harvesting crops. Once you have your location picked out, you have two options. First, you can till up a patch of land for your garden, clearing all the existing grass and weeds. Over the winter months, the grass and weed trimmings will decompose, enriching the soil naturally. You can place railroad ties, planks, or bricks around the perimeter of the garden to keep the weeds and surrounding grass out if you wish. Another option is to create a raised vegetable garden design. These freestanding gardens have several benefits that may make life easier for beginning gardeners. First of all, you can fill them with the soil of your choice. Often, the existing soil in the yard is not suitable for gardening, being too sandy or full of clay. On top of that, having a raised garden will prevent the soil from being compacted when people walk over the soil to tend the garden. You can construct a large box to contain the garden yourself or hire a landscaper or contractor to do it for you. Raised vegetable gardens are more expensive to set up at the front end, but are often easier to maintain than standard gardens.
Planting
Once your vegetable garden layout is ready the fun part begins. It’s now time to think about planting and the types of vegetables you are going to grow in your new garden. Begin by going to a local gardening store and looking at seed packs as well as sprouted plants. Check the light, spacing, and water requirements of each vegetable and take note of the suggested planting times and how long it takes the plants to produce vegetables. Once you’ve picked out the vegetables you want to grow, you will need to plant them so that the shortest plants face the direction that the sun rises, making sure to arrange the plants from shortest to tallest. This prevents tall plants from blocking out the sun to the rest of the garden throughout the day. You are also going to want to make sure to use your space efficiently by planting in rows that are about 4 feet wide. You want the rows to be wide enough that you’re not wasting space, but you also need to be able to easily reach the center of each row. Space your plants or seeds according to package directions and give them a good watering.
From there, you will need to water regularly and fertilize lightly. In a few months, the vegetables will be ready for harvest, giving you some of the freshest produce available.
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