Veg gardening

 Veg garden for beginners

Are you starting your first vegetable garden?

It is a really exciting time, though Just a little awesome because of some questions there,"Where do I start? What do I plant? Will I even get a harvest?"
Are you adding to your garden this growing season?
Or you are a complete novice and starting your first garden.

Raised veg garden bed:

How to make a small vegetable patio planter?

To install a new vegetable bed together, to get it planted.This is about three feet  or slightly over, three feet by four feet (or 100 by 120 centimeters). It is a pallet collar bed so it is instant and it comes ready.

It gives nice pleasing lines of symmetry and just adds to the order of it all. Now why raised  beds? Why bother with them?

The whole point of a raised bed is that it raises the surface area above the surrounding ground level. It drains through a lot quicker so the growing medium inside dries out quicker. And after a long wet winter that's really valuable because drier soil in the spring tends to warm up a lot quicker, giving you a head start on sowing, in the colder ground. So to get your raised bed in place, you will need raised bed materials to make one with, you will need some cardboard, a growing medium to fill up your bed, a wheelbarrow to transport it, some tools and your plants and seeds.

Install a pallet collar  bed,  which can be sourced very cheaply indeed:

If you want a different sized bed, which means a bit longer, it is very easy to make your own from lumber.

As you are growing edibles in the bed, use untreated, natural wood as you do not

want any nasty chemicals leaching into the soil.

If you want to make your own bed, use wood that's at least an inch or preferably two inches thick. This will give a really solid, long lasting bed. Just drill pilot holes close to the end of each plank and into the adjoining plank, then screw together using long screws to ensure a properly secured finish.

Overlap the planks, one over the other all the way around, so the bed is adding on to the end of the row. It does get a fair amount of sunshine but it also has a fair amount of dappled shade too. Ideally you want to put beds where they get as much sunshine as possible, at least six hours, eight hours ideally. But never mind if you do have quite a shady spot, you can at least grow some leafy crops and salads, many of which you will be planting.

You need a bit of a slope, to dig the bed into the slope so its level the water 

does not run off.  A bit of a slope is fine but if too much, it will get a bit problematic. You can either build up the soil on the underside to lift it up level.

Mark out the position of the bed with canes pushing into the corners, just to know you are digging. This is actually quite a quick project. It reckons that digging in takes about 15 minutes and for planting, you can get this done within one hour,  you will honestly do it and feel it is a lovely project. You can even get it done in your lunch break maybe. Very satisfying to the best of your ability.

Use some of the excavated material back around the edges to firm the bed in. To help suppress the weeds, put a layer of cardboard down.

This acts as a barrier. It makes it much harder for the weeds to get, though the safe side is to use cardboard.

When you are using cardboard do make sure it is plain cardboard not glossy. Get a really good overlap so that the weeds do not get a chance to poke through. And just make sure it is quite damp.

In a dry climate give it a good soak to thoroughly wet it through. This will take about two months or so to rot down and if you have got perennial weeds they will be severely weakened. Then they have got to get through that growing medium on top and it really does give you a competitive edge. Some people use that sort of weed suppressing membrane like Mypex, made from plastic and so on.

Do not be keen on that for obvious reasons, try to use less plastic. Why not use waste materials you have got to hand, anyhow just make sure you remove any staples and bits of tape for a clean stuff. The beauty of starting a raised bed is there is no digging involved, it is the plug and play way to get growing. You simply pop your bed in, fill it with your growing medium, plant it and you are away.

Veg easy to grow:

Starting to fill it with what?

Filling your bed can get quite expensive, especially if you are using bought in

all-purpose potting mix, it is pricey stuff, so start filling the bed with what you have

got to hand. You may have bits of pruning lying around and are quite dry. Break them up by snapping them down, spread them all out and those will rot down. It will act a bit like slow release fertilizer. Slowly breaking down and adding their nutrients into the rest of the growing medium.

You have got a few options when it comes to filling your bed with the rest of your growing medium:

You could use well-rotted manure that works well.

Green waste compost, special topsoil you buy in, or your own garden compost.

Using it to fill most of your beds. You can also use mushroom compost.

Mushroom compost, as  the name implies, is compost that was used to grow

mushrooms. But it still got loads of  good life in it and it's really great stuff. When you are filling any bed, get the compost into the corners and edges to pack it in.

You can actually stand in it and press it in. You want it nice and firm,so the roots have plenty to go on.

And that way you know once you have squashed it down you might need to go back and get another load. To finish this with just a thin layer of slightly finer material. Open the bag of all-purpose potting mix and just add that over. Growing your food in it, you could  eat your food. It is so clean and lovely.

The most exciting part, planting  of course:

You can buy plug plants. They are readily available in garden centers and plant nurseries, especially in spring time of year.

These have got a nice little root system and are ready to go out. Start with salad onions, spring onions, radishes, lettuce, some peas, some beets, beetroot or scallions. 

Sow them in little clusters, sort of between three and five plants in one little group. Space them about four to six inches apart, each clump.

Beetroot seeds are like a cluster of seeds, so you often get two or even three seedlings popup for each seed. Cover them all up, give it a quick water to wet, to get a good start, because the compost is quite dry and it wakes the seeds up.

Motivational Final Thoughts:

Planting a bed of fast growing salads really gets you motivated and encouraged for further plantings. There are so many options, leafy salads including Asian greens like mizuna, corn and dwarf beans.

That is the really  thrilling thing about all of this.

Cover Your newly sown bed to get a better start.

Some pests, birds, your dog or a cute cat, there is everything out to dig up your perfectly clean beds. Cover will just keep them off.

It is absolutely fine you have a new vegetable bed standing as like an island, perhaps in amongst lawn all around it, but if you have got lots of these beds in vegetable garden. You need paths in between them. For paths you would like to use wood chips. Just lay them on a weed smothering layer of cardboard and spread them out. It is clean, it smells gorgeous and it keeps your feet nice and clean as well.

If you want to do your beds just directly on the grass but without the raised beds, then you can just put down your cardboard and then put a nice thick layer of your compost or other organic matter to make it easier.

Use taller raised beds, perhaps grow in planters raised up on legs or grow in containers. You may love starting off your growing areas.
It means more delicious, garden grown, organic produce and that's what motivates you.