I admit it, I’m a scrapper. I love growing vegetables from scraps. It doesn’t always work, but when it does you get to give yourself a little pat on the back, and if you have kids, they’ll think you’re a super cool mad scientist.
Category: Vegetable Gardening
In the articles below, discover everything you need to know about vegetable gardening, including companion planting, garden planning, and all the tips and tricks you need to know to grow a bountiful vegetable garden.
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!
I admit that subtitle is a bit misleading. No matter how much of a hurry you might be in, the magic of nature takes time. So “hurry” is pretty relative here. That said, there are some vegetables that take what seems like foreeeeeeeeever to grow. I love spaghetti squash and Brussels sprouts, but you gotta have some serious patience to grow those.
I’m writing this in early fall in the northeastern part of the United States, where fall weather is well underway. The last of my summer tomatoes are ready for harvest, and the Delicata squash is in. And though there are still quite a few cooler weather vegetables in the garden, the season is definitely winding […]
The first garden I planted got morning sun, but a mostly shady afternoon, and let’s just say my harvests mostly came up empty-handed. And I was particularly devastated when I tended to my watermelons daily, only for them to turn up pale and bland even in late August. There’s nothing like babying your garden all spring and early summer, to learn your placement is fundamentally flawed.
They lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, help prevent cancer, have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, act as an antiviral, improve gut bacteria, and that’s just the beginning. There’s no denying the health benefits of cruciferous vegetables. In the kitchen, you can sauté, steam, roast, and grill them. You can enjoy them raw. Add them […]
I don’t know about you, but as a beginner, not very serious gardener, I used to go to the store, look at the seeds, and just pick the vegetables and herbs I liked. I didn’t give much thought to whether or not it was too late to plant tomato seeds in July or if my garden had enough sun for eggplants to grow. Certainly, I had some luck and once in a while would pick something easy to grow (yay for radishes!) but I also had my share of disappointments. In fact, I mostly had disappointments in those early days.
There are some opinions out there about what to do with root-bound tomato plants. Quite a few people seem to believe that the best thing is to just dump them in the compost pile. Other people don’t see any problem with root-bound tomato plants as long as you care for them. I look at it […]
What’s the right size for raised garden beds? That’s a great question! The answer? Well, it’s not complicated, but it does take some consideration. Of the many wonderful aspects of a raised bed garden, one of the things I love most is that they can accommodate a variety of gardeners. While some of us are […]
I’m just going to lay it on the line here: gardening can be expensive. It doesn’t need to be, and certainly, the return on investment is usually pretty high. That said, it’s also easy to walk out of the gardening store with a lot less cash in your pocket. That’s why high-yield crops are such […]
It is a real bummer to walk to your garden on a summer afternoon and find sun-scorched plants wilting away in the heat. You’ve tested your soil, and you even started your own compost to make sure your plants have plenty of nutrition. You started your seeds indoors, and you made sure to harden off […]