Vegetable gardening is nutritious in both body and mind. It’s exciting to watch a little seed turn into a sprout, then into a small plant, and eventually, into a big ole squash plant that’s bursting with bright yellow gourds and giant green leaves. Digging your hands into cool soil is meditative. Smelling the basil and dill is heavenly. And you don’t have to live on a country estate to grow your own food at home, either.
City dwellers can plant vegetables in patio container gardens. In cold climates, you can start a small garden indoors or even grow vegetables outdoors most of the year if you have a greenhouse.
When it comes to planning a backyard vegetable garden, ideas are easy to come by. There are plenty of pictures of elaborate gardens with rows of sun-ripened tomatoes, entire sections devoted solely to peas, raised beds for root vegetables, and, of course, a fountain and seating area. We don’t all have gigantic yards, though. As nice as it would be to have row after row of heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers, it’s just not realistic when your backyard garden is a two-foot by four-foot rectangle between your driveway and the foundation of your house.
The thing is, you can create a really nice garden in that small rectangle of space. It’s a simple matter of timing, design, and plant selection. But if you have a large backyard, even better!
In the articles below, we dive into everything you need to know about vegetable gardening. You can learn even more in our How to Grow a Vegetable Garden: 10 Things Every Gardener Needs to Know Before Starting a Food Garden freebie. Enjoy!
Hey there, fellow kitchen adventurers! Today, let’s dive into the aromatic world of homemade onion powder – that humble yet mighty ingredient that can transform a dish from bland to grand in a sprinkle! Let’s face it, onions are the unsung heroes of the kitchen. But when you’re in a rush or just want to […]
Ah… the English vegetable garden. Maybe I’ve watched too many British television shows, but I picture an English vegetable garden as a place to take my afternoon tea with a book and biscuit whilst colorful Peacock butterflies flit about and the birds sing their happy songs.
The first time I planted an herb garden and saw my chives, sage, and thyme grow back in the second year, I jumped to wondering what other kinds of herbs and vegetables regrow a second season and beyond. Living in New England, even perennial herbs like Rosemary are considered “tender perennials” depending on how harsh your winter gets, so could there be perennial vegetables that differ in their perennial-ness, too?
They say you can’t put pineapple on pizza. They say you shouldn’t have more than two cups of coffee or tea each day. They say you can’t have it all. Well, I’m not exactly sure who “they” are, but I’m here to tell you that you can have it all. You want pineapple on that pizza? Four cups of coffee? Go for it. You want flowering vegetables? Go for…. wait. What?
It can be tough to find the right Valentine gifts for gardeners. They’re a relatively self-sufficient bunch. They also probably fall into two groups: those who already have every imaginable gardening product and those who are happy with a shovel, a spade, a rake, a hose, and nothing more. That doesn’t give us much to […]
Staying up to date on vegetable garden trends and coming up with new garden design ideas can be exhausting if you don’t know where to turn. Following gardening Instagram influencers can be a great resource for new growing methods and photo tutorials. It’s also really helpful to see real-life examples of people using different garden tools or growing techniques.
There are dozens of good reasons to start a community vegetable garden, but there’s a lot more to it than just planting a bunch of veggies in an empty lot. And to be successful, you can’t do it alone. It truly is a community project.
Hydroponic gardening gets all the fanfare these days, but we shouldn’t overlook the exciting world of aeroponic gardening. As the name suggests, aeroponic gardening is a method of growing plants and vegetables in the air without the use of soil. In fact, NASA has been using and studying aeroponic growing methods for years.
For those of you who are like me and aren’t especially fond of weeding, there’s another way to keep them under control: cover crops. And the best cover crops are easy, worry-free, and will nourish your garden soil all in one go. If you’re wondering how you’ve missed the idea of cover crops, you aren’t […]
When Emily Dickinson wrote this poem in the mid-1800s, she may or may not have been thinking about flowers for a vegetable garden. There’s really no way to say. She is, however, absolutely correct in that without bees and other pollinators, we would have a lot fewer fruits and vegetables in this world. Melons, squash, cucumbers, blueberries, cranberries, and cherries would all be lost without pollinators. I’ve seen tomato plants grow sky high without growing a single tomato.
