First Steps of Creating a Vegetable Garden

Growing your own vegetable garden at home has many benefits – it can supply you with the freshest ingredients, you will know exactly what chemicals – or lack thereof – that were involved in the growing of your crop, and it can create a platform for your child to help develop a green thumb. However, you may be a bit confused as to what sort of plants prosper in your region, how to grow and cultivate seedlings, and where to plant your growing plants.

Start Indoors. Growing your plants indoors will ensure that you protect them from frost, control the health of the soil, and prevent insects that may potentially kill your plants. You will have more control of your seeds, making sure that most of the seeds will yield a plant.

What Seeds Should I Plant?
You should consider the region and time of frost. In most temperate regions in the United States, tomatoes, most peppers, carrots, and beans do well when they are planted from January to April. For the cooler months before the danger of frost is imminent, cucumbers, peas, and garlic tend to do well. Some of the easier vegetables to grow from seed include:

• Radishes. They grow relatively quick, with most plants reaching maturity within a few months. Radishes are also particularly robust, growing in the spring and fall.
• Swiss Chards. Nutritionally dense, swiss chards are relatively low maintenance; growing in most soil types. Most swiss chard variants are also frost and heat resistant.
• Lettuce. One of the benefits of lettuce is that there are so many types for you to choose from. Most lettuce types require shade, making them the perfect vegetable to grow under taller plants.
• Green Beans. Most green beans, like string beans and lima beans, are easy to grow and quick to produce more seeds. Many are vine types, adding personality to gates and entryways.

Several Options To Growing Your Seeds Indoors
Many beginners start with simply planting their seeds in pots or seed trays – which is a viable method of planting your seeds. All you need is well-ventilated soil mixed with an organic compost, and some mulch to ensure that the soil does not dry out completely. However, jars and even hydroponics is an option for the appropriate plant and setup. These can add an accented piece to your living spaces by blending in with the decor.

Considerations When Transplanting To A Vegetable Garden
Planting indoors allows you to plant early in the season, ensuring a rigorous crop. However, the magic of starting indoors is that you can eventually transfer the plants to a plot of land, and have a sustainable vegetable garden.

Test the soil. Use a spade, and dig up 6-inch sections across various areas in your vegetable garden. Send this to be tested, or use a soil testing kit. You will then have a profile of your soil, including pH level, texture, and level of organic material. You will then be given instructions to make your soil more suitable for most vegetables.

Prevent Diseases. Prevention is key, ensuring that you do not have to deal with an ongoing infestation. Mildew and root rot are some of the more common ailments that hit vegetables – here’s how to prevent them from damaging your crop. Generally speaking, well-ventilated soil that isn’t over-watered will prevent most issues.

Harvesting From Your Vegetable Garden
The fun part of growing your plants is eventually harvesting your grown vegetables. There are arbitrary guidelines to harvesting vegetables. However, it is best to pluck vegetables as soon as they are ripe – this will sometimes encourage the plant to produce more vegetables.

Get Your Garden Growing By Improving the Soil

Many people are having problems with their gardens specifically because they are not nourishing the plants properly through the soil. People who use just any patch of soil without properly nurturing it might be planting their garden in an area that is devoid of nutrients. However, a thorough understanding of the different soil types and how they function can make all the difference for gardeners who are trying to improve their gardens.

Compost

Compost is defined as decayed organic matter. While compost is decayed, it is usually not going to decay much further beyond the point at which it is received, contrary to popular belief. The chemistry of compost, specifically the low concentrations of nitrogen and carbon, make this possible. As such, adding compost to the mix is not going to introduce an unstable element to the soil. When people try to introduce many other types of organic matter into the soil, they are going to break down fairly readily. Compost has a way of contributing what people need effectively.

Many people have heard about all of the environmental benefits of letting old plant matter turn into compost mulch. The compost mulch is going to nourish the soil more effectively than almost any artificial treatment ever could. Compost is broken down by a combination of various microorganisms, and these microorganisms can create the perfect environment for plants due to changes in the soil quality. Compost improves the soil quality, allowing plants to thrive.

Clay and Fertilizer

Soil is a mixture of silt, sand, and clay particles. The composition of clay particles in the soil is going to make all the difference due to the chemistry involved. Clay particles are negatively charged. As such, they are going to attract a lot of the nutrients that plants need and that are necessary in order to create a healthy soil environment overall. Calcium, ammonium, magnesium, and potassium are all positively-charged cations, so negatively-charged clay particles are going to manage to attract them easily.

Soil that is rich is clay is usually going to be more fertile than soil that has a relatively high composition of silt and sand. Sand particles have no charge, and they’re going to give soil shape without really increasing its fertility levels at all.

People can increase the inherent fertility of soil through fertilizer. The fertilizer is going to be highly concentrated when it comes to the nutrients that plants need in order to thrive. These are going to be minerals that plants cannot make on their own through photosynthesis, and that must be absorbed through the soil. Fertilizer can help nourish the plants directly, even as other parts of the soil give it structure and compost improves the health and quality of the soil.

Improving Soil Health

Not everyone is going to be blessed with a patch of garden that is going to have enough of a clay composition to naturally supply the plants with what they need. Particularly in certain parts of the world, people are going to be stuck with soil that has a higher concentration of silt or sand. Products like those available through Whittier Fertilizers can help people give their plants what they need in order to thrive in a wide range of different soil types. People can get the organic compost that they need, and they can rest assured that this is the sort of high-quality compost that does not always form naturally.

Gardening Basics Every Gardener Should Know

There is no way of getting around gardening; having a beautiful garden takes a lot of work. Meaning you have to invest some money and time. However, by following these gardening basics every gardener should know will enable you to labor more efficiently.

Work with good soil

Soil is the foundation of all gardening activities. You have no option but to go organic; work with dried peat moss or compost manure for nutrient-rich soil. Soil that is amended is much lighter, makes it easy to weed, allows easy establishment of plant roots, and drains off well.

Study

To get the best out of your garden, you need to study; first you have to know what kind of climate you have and the kind of crops that do well in it. Study garden books and magazines, visit online gardening pages like Whittier Fertilizer for informative gardening information.

Buy seeds

Buying store starts is not only limiting but also expensive in the long run. If you are planting vegetables, then store-starts are quite unnecessary. If you decide to buy seeds, you will get more vegetable varieties, pay much less, and get healthier crops. Corn, beets, lettuce, greens, melon, cucumber, and several other vegetables can be successfully sown.

No low quality seedlings

If you opt to go for store-starts rather than seeds, ensure the seedlings you buy are good. There are numerous low quality seedlings on offer in the market, so you need to be cautious. You will come across root-bound, bolting, and nutrient stressed seedlings so before you make a purchase conduct due diligence.

Sow in blocks

Consider sowing in blocks to get maximum yields from your garden. You can either decide to sow in spaced triangles or square foot gardening though the latter is deemed to be too tight for good plant growth while the former gives maximum space for planting.

Know when to harvest

Harvesting time is a great stumbling block for some new gardeners. If you are gardening for commercial purposes, poor time of the harvesting time can significantly affect your prices. You should learn about your crops to know the signs that show that the crops are ready.

Practice mulching

Mulching is everything and should be done everywhere in your garden where the ground is exposed. Ensure the ground is covered, or nature will take its cause and cover it for you with weeds. Particularly, use organic mulches that will decompose over time and feed your soil with nutrients.

Keep away pests and diseases

New plants are prone to attacks from pests and insects. You can try one of the most cost-effective ways of keeping the insects away by wiping the plant leaves with vinegar. Vinegar not only keeps insects away but also makes the plant fungi resistant.

Do not give up

No matter how long you have been gardening, things are bound to go wrong at one point. You crops will be attacked by pests, and some will end up dying, there are seasons when you will happen to grow more weeds than plants. This is sure to happen but what really matters is how you walk out from it.

There are so many gardening ideas out there that will make you successful; however, the gardening basics every gardener should know discussed above are sure to kick you off. You can also visit or contact whittier fertilizer for landscaping products such as compost, mulch, bark, fertilizer, topsoil as well as gardening advice.

Spring Gardening Checklist

While spring technically begins on March 21, it is vital that you consider the climate zone of your current location, to determine the potential danger of frost. Most plants tend to thrive in frost free conditions, where the soil will be at least a couple degrees above freezing. When it comes to gardening, spring starts when the soil says so. There are a myriad of tools that you can utilize to help determine your current climate zone via zip code. If you think that your area has passed the danger of frost, then use a soil thermometer to double check. It is recommended that the soil is on average, 50 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Once you know that you have passed the danger of frost, then you can prepare for spring gardening.

Surveying the yard and completing a soil test. If you have trees in your yard, make sure that their limbs aren’t overhanging on structures. This may require you to hire an arborist, especially if you have large trees. Remove last year’s perennial foliage, and inspect your drainage and ditches. Leaves and other organic and inorganic material tend to gather in the drainage area over the winter. Make sure that spring rains have a place to drain off by removing this debris. Spring seedlings need proper drainage for them to grow. Remove dead leaves, branches, and toss them into your compost. If necessary, refresh mulch in your planting areas. Before planting new seeds, check the pH of your soil with a home kit. Take several samples from different areas in your garden for an accurate reading of your yard’s overall health. You may need to add lime to raise the pH of your soil or elemental sulfur to reduce it.

Remove seedling-killing weeds. Weeds are the worst enemies of young plants as it robs your garden of proper nutrients. Particular weed strains can be fast-growing, quickly overshadowing your growing plants, potentially killing them. Even though you should be diligent of weeds even during the cooler months, chop off current weeds right below ground level.

Consider pruning. If you have neglected your garden, then your yard may look under the weather. For your spring garden, prune your flowers, shrubs, and trees. By pruning, you are supporting new growth, as well as encouraging flowering plants. If self-pruning, make sure that you cut at a 90-degree angle, right in front of a leaf cluster. Cut us close to the part that you want to keep, without actually cutting into it.

Preparing new beds for planting. After removing debris and weeds, spread about 4 to 5 inches of compost over the soil, then use a spading fork to cultivate up to a foot deep. Transfer container plants into the appropriate hole of suitable depth. You may want to consider planting:

• Spinach. It grows quickly and is surprisingly handy when it comes to cooking. There are a large variety of spinach plants, but most are of the crinkled or curly leaf variety. If this is your first time with spinach, then you can mix the variety to compliment the theme of your garden.
• Radishes. One of the more fast-growing vegetables that you can grow. Radishes can be harvested in just a couple of weeks after being planted.
• Peas. Take about 50 to 65 days to mature, and make a great spring vegetable that is works with most palates.

If you live in an area that tends to have an intermittent or irregular frost season, then consider planting frost-resistant plants. This includes sweet peas, rose mallow, and sweet alyssum. For tolerant vegetables consider broccoli and cauliflower. It is best to screen newly planted seeds with a cover, or keep them potted indoors, until you are confident that the frost season has passed. Consider adding an extra layer of protective mulch, as it is a useful protector against the sting of icy weather.

Tips for Using Compost

Soil Amendments – What are they used for and what type of amendments should you use?

Starting Seeds 101: When and How