How to Create a Veggie Garden
Creating a veggie garden is fun, rewarding & healthy!
November 2018
Creating a veggie garden in your backyard is an ideal task for Spring. With day lights savings now over, there's more light in the day, and the days are starting to get warmer. On days like these you'll find yourself drawn to the outdoors and spending more time in your backyard. You don't need a huge backyard, or even an existing garden to set up a veggie garden.
A veggie garden is a great way to ensure you are getting plenty of fruit and vegetables in your diet, reduce the amount of plastic you use from bagging produce at the supermarket, and creating a more diverse and functional backyard. Plus, a veggie garden comes in handy when you're entertaining guests for your weekend BBQs. Home-grown salad items like lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and capsicum are packed with so much more flavours than store bought varieties, and fresh herbs are key to topping off your delicious dishes.
Planting your own fruit and vegetables is also a great way to keep your food costs down. You'll also find you'll have less wastage as you only pick what you need and when you need it. Rather than letting almost whole heads of store-bought produce rot in your fridge before you get the chance to eat it, you can just pick a few lettuce leaves out of the garden.
A veggie garden is also a great excuse to muck in outside, get some fresh air and get back in touch with nature. They can be a great educational opportunity for the kids as well. Let them plant and nurture their own vegetables and then they get to pick them when it's time to eat!
A vegetable garden can be whatever you decide to make it - a full glasshouse of every type of tomato, or a small planter box in your courtyard. The choice is yours! Once you've decided to create a veggie garden, there are a few tried and tested steps to get you through to completion:
1. Decide on A Spot for Your Veggie Garden
Choose a spot that gets plenty of sunshine, as the sun’s rays are key to helping your veggies grow. It also should be safe from the family pet, so you can use netting to protect it or simply create a raised veggie garden bed. Your pets might go wild for the scent of the soil, and erase all your hard work perfectly planting your seeds - you can instead be left with a dug-up garden and a massive mess. You should also place it somewhere close to a water source to make watering your garden a breeze.
2. Decide What to Plant
You should research the best plants to grow in the current season. If you’re creating your veggie garden in Spring, the best fruits, veggies and herbs to plant this season are lettuce, capsicum, rocket, silverbeet, citrus fruits, cucumber, tomatoes, parsley, coriander, thyme and mint. Whether you’re planting bulbs or seeds, the package should include instructions on the spacing required for each item. Some plants can need up to 30 - 40 centimetres spacing between plants. The spacing, and the number of plants you want to grow will dictate how big you need to make your garden.
3. Decide on Your Garden Materials
If you already have a garden bed, you can start here. However, if you don’t have an existing garden to work with, you’ll need to create one! You can build a raised veggie garden quite easily - either with some bricks, timber sleepers, hay bales, or some pieces of corrugated iron. Alternatively, you can purchase pre-built raised garden beds from your local hardware store.
4. Get Planting!
Follow the spacing requirements for your plants, and carefully plot where everything will be planted and then get going! Loosen the soil a bit so the roots have a bit of room to grow, and make sure you get any special plant food required.
5. Nurture Your Plants
Your plants need food and water to grow, so make sure they are well fed year-round with clean water, compost, plant food and fertilisers. Be sure to also keep the garden free of weeds. Some expert gardeners also recommend talking to their plants to get them to grow!
A veggie garden is a great addition to any household. If your home is lacking the space for a veggie garden, it might be time to consider if your home is ticking all your boxes. It’d be a shame to miss out on the joys and benefits of planting and eating your own veggies! If you’ve decided to move to a house with a bigger garden, talk to John Ryan Removals, the expert furniture removalists in Melbourne. Our friendly team of moving specialists will help make your moving day a breeze.