Vegetable Gardening Basics: Easy Growing Guide

Preface

Vegetable Gardening Basics is a comprehensive guide to teach you how to grow all sorts of vegetables easily.

This guide goes through the whole process of; preparing the ground for a new vegetable plot and preparing the soil type. It covers the advantages of compost heaps to provide the rich loam that can be easily added to your plot. The guide shows you how to rotate crops to get best results and how to specifically manure each plot to ensure the correct fertilization.

I show in this book how you can grow prolific amount of vegetables from small plots by carefully deciding what goes into plot.

To make life easier for the enthusiastic gardener I show some key techniques used in the vegetable plot or garden and the things that can go wrong with your fledgling garden i.e. how to anticipate problems before they hit.

In this guide we provide a month by month guide to what should be planted when and what preparations you should make for the coming seasons. Once that is understood we then describe the main vegetables, how to plant, grow, fertilize, harvest and those things that can go wrong with your veggies.

The guide finishes up with a full grown plan for growing all types of herbs ideal in all home cooking. So you can develop a whole garden with this guide or simply develop a kitchen garden.

Although this book has attempted to advise when you should plant your vegetables, planting is heavily dependent on geographic location and weather conditions local to your area. Before you follow planting instructions review the zones in which you live and adjust the planting season accordingly. Most seeds and seedlings have specific local planting instructions on the package; use these as your primary guidelines.

One final thought on fertilizers; with the ongoing concern to health types of insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers continue to evolve. Take the insecticides and fungicides in this book as a guide but check with your local garden center for the latest and organic replacements. However, if you maintain your plants with correct soil and balanced regular watering the need for these compounds can be dramatically reduced. This has been demonstrated in a previous book ‘EasyGrowing Container Gardens’ where all plants are grown either directly from compost bags or from underneath plastic. Using this technique I found that I required very little of the insecticides and fungicides as the plants were so healthy that they managed to keep infections at bay.

As for fertilizers if you continue to rotate crops and dig in quality compost the need for artificial fertilizers is again reduced. But a lot does depend on climate and soil conditions. Simple experimentation and some patience will tell you over time what makes your vegetable garden flourish.

Tools and Gardening Jargon

Tool Descriptions: Here is a list of the tools used in this book;

• Dibber - A dibber or dibble is a pointed wooden stick for making holes in the ground with the intent to plant seeds, seedlings and small bulbs. Dibbers come in many shapes and sizes including the straight dibber, T-handled dibber, trowel dibber and L-shaped dibber. In this book we use mostly the straight dibber

• Rake - is used here primarily for loosening soil and raking the ground for seed planting

• Spade - primarily used for spreading soil

• Fork - used for turning and aerating the soil

• Hoe - used for keeping weeds at bay in your garden by disturbing the root system

Gardening Jargon: Below is a brief list of the likely gardening jargon you will encounter in this book;

• Soil - your local topsoil

• Sub-soil - about a foot below the topsoil

• Loam - is soil composed of sand, silt and clay in relatively even amounts

• Tilth - refers to soil that has the correct constituents and nutrients to grow healthy crops

• Manure - organic fertilizer

• Seed - plant embryo

• Seedling - small plant just evolved from the plant embryo

• Brassicas - generic name for cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, mustard plants etc.

• Double Digging - gardening technique used to increase soil drainage and aeration.

• Cold frame - transparent roof enclosure built close to the ground to protect plants from both wind and frosts

• Cloche - a simple protective transparent cover that stops young plants from frost or wind damage

• Thinning - careful removal of young plants to make room for others. These plants maybe trashed or replanted

• Pricking out - also known as thinning out, means removing the seedlings from their original container and replanting into individual cells or pots to give them more growing room

Preparing the Vegetable Plot

Garden grown vegetables have a flavor rarely matched by those bought from a shop. And even a small garden can produce small luxury vegetable crops each and every season!

Preparation of your vegetable plot is probably the most important aspect of growing to get right. Many gardeners grow vegetables only if they have space to spare. Yet vegetables not only provide fresh, full flavored food but can also be a money saver, particularly if you have a greenhouse or cold frame to help grow early and late crops when they are out of season and usually expensive to buy. Pick a light, airy spot for the vegetable plot; one that gets plenty of sun and is not overhung by trees or shaded by fences. You may prefer to have only lawns and flower beds in view from the house but do not, for this reason, relegate the vegetable plot to an unsuitable portion of the garden. A well-tended plot, perhaps edged with herbs, can be most attractive.

Water is vital for growing vegetables, not only to increase the yield and prevent crop failure but also to make seed sowing practicable. If the plot is some way from the mains water supply, install a standpipe. One good path of a solid material, such as concrete, is useful. Other paths should be narrow, temporary ones made by treading down the soil firmly; they can be dug over when needed.

Site the cold frame on a border facing west or south at the eastern end of the plot, which should get plenty of sun. This is also the best end for permanent seed beds.

Some form of windbreak may be needed round the vegetable plot if it is exposed to prevailing winds. A dwarf hedge about 2ft high is adequate. Dividers between different sections of vegetables are a waste of space in a small garden.

Preparing the Ground for a New Vegetable Plot

Clear and prepare the site for a new vegetable garden in fall or during a dry and frost free period in winter. It will then be ready for planting the following spring. If the site has run wild or has not been cultivated before, clear away all rubbish, burning it where possible; bricks and rubble can be used as foundations for a path. If builders have been on the site, the subsoil may have been left on the surface; distribute it as evenly as possible over the garden. Use a bagging hook or a rotary grass cutter to cut down tall grass, coarse weeds and brambles make sure there are no thick, protruding roots to foul the blades.

Next stage, skim off the turf surface using a spade or a turfing iron if you can borrow one. First sharpen the blade with a file and then mark out the surface in strips with 1in deep spade cuts, the width of the spade apart. Make similar cuts at right angles, about 12in apart. Insert the spade (or turfing iron) into the cuts and push it horizontally to lift 1in thick pieces of turf. Stack the turf in an unused corner of the garden, grass side downwards. Dust the layers alternately with lime and sulphate of ammonia, until the stack is complete. It will eventually rot down into loam for potting or planting mixtures.

Digging over a plot: To dig over a large area such as a vegetable patch. Start by dividing the plot down the middle with a garden line. Dig out a strip of soil to the depth of one spade blade and about 12in wide, running from one side of the plot to the middle line. Do not try to get too much on the spade. This just makes the work harder than necessary. It is quite sufficient if each load of soil is 4 to 6 in thick. Put the soil from this initial trench in a heap at the same end of the plot but on the path near the adjacent half to be dug. It will be used later to fill the last trench.

If manure or garden compost is available to enrich the plot spread it evenly over the ground. Barrow it out in heaps and spread it with a rake. Keep a little aside with the heaped earth, for the final trench.

Push the manure from the next strip of ground into the trench, spreading it evenly.

Now dig the second strip across the half plot, throwing the soil into the first trench and turning each spadeful over so that what was originally on the surface is now about 10 in deep.

Continue in this way to the end of the plot and then work back along the other half. Fill the final trench with the soil from the first trench. Double Digging: if possible, double dig the ground, adding manure or well-rotted garden compost into the top spit at the rate of a 2 gallon bucket to the square yard. To double dig over a large area, start as for single digging, by dividing the plot down the center with a garden line.

Mark out with a line a 2ft wide strip across the end of the half plot to be dug first. Take out the soil from this trench to the depth of a spade blade. Heap the soil at the same end but on the path near the adjacent half plot. Using a fork, break up the bottom of the trench thoroughly to a depth of 10in.

As with single digging, spread manure or compost over the surface of the whole plot. But if it is in short supply keep it until the double digging is completed and then fork it into the top 4 to 6in. Push the manure or compost from the next 2ft strip, which is marked out with a garden line, into the trench. Spread it evenly and work it in with the fork.

Dig up the second 2ft strip and put each spadeful upside down into the open trench.

Take the first spadeful from the far side of the second 2ft strip and turn it over against the near face of the trench. This will form a solid wall, to retain the remaining spadefuls when they are thrown into the trench beyond it. Continue, as in single digging, round the two half plots, until the final trench is filled with the soil from the first trench. Double digging helps aerate the soil for better drainage and keeps the top soil and nutrients near to the surface

If the plot is thick with perennial weeds, particularly couch grass, ground elder, docks, dandelions and nettles; lift the roots and burn them, afterwards returning the ashes to the soil.

Preparing Your Type of Soil

The ideal soil for vegetables is loam, a mixture of sand, silt, clay and humus. Good loam has these in sufficient proportions to ensure that it does not dry out quickly, does not get waterlogged and has an open, spongy texture. Good loam is easily worked and needs only the regular replacement of plant food in the form of manure and fertilizers. Every gardener should aim at loam by adding humus forming and moisture retaining material, such as manure and peat. One way of recognizing good loam is by the weeds it produces – weed such as sow thistle, grounded, chickweed and fat hen. Another is by working the soil in the palm of your hand. Moist loam can be easily molded and easily crumbled. It can, with care, be rolled into a thread but this thread cannot be bent into a small ring without breaking, as most sticky clay soils can. Soil color varies considerably, dark brown earth is best, as it absorbs heat and warms up quickly. Well drained soil is even in color, mottling or staining of the soil indicates poor drainage. Soil may be acid or alkaline, whatever its type. Most vegetables grow best in soil that is neutral, neither too acid nor too alkaline or slightly acid. Heavy acidic soils need dressings of lime, the amount depending on the degree of acidity, which can be measured with an inexpensive soil testing kit. Ideally, the measurement should be between pH 6.5 and pH 7.0. Alkalinity can be counteracted by adding acid material such as moss peat or poultry manure to the soil.

Silty soil shares most of the properties of good loam but is very fine and has a smooth, silky feeling. The texture can be improved by adding well-rotted garden compost or farmyard manure.

Sandy soil is light and dry. It warms up rapidly in spring in time for early crops and also