If you are to succeed and get a good harvest at the end of the season, you will need to begin the season with quite a bit of forethought and planning.
The more mind power you invest at the beginning, the better your garden will turn out to be. Here are a few things to think about before you put in a vegetable garden.
What do you like to eat?
It’s no use growing spinach or green beans if you won’t really enjoy putting them on the dinner table.
Do you like to spend time in the kitchen?
A vegetable garden locks you into cooking. You will need to trim, cut and cook green beans. Peppers if eaten raw just need to be washed, cored, seeded and cut up. Tomatoes require at least cleaning and slicing, but if you want to preserve the bounty at the height of the season, you will need to clean, blanch and either can or freeze your tomatoes. You get the idea. It’s fun to do vegetable gardening but it does require quite a bit of kitchen work.
How much time are you willing to put into your garden?
You should start small when you’re just learning. Obviously, the bigger the garden the more work and time you will need to devote to it. One estimate suggests that you will need to spend at least an hour per week for every 100 square feet of garden, which is fairly small, will take much more than an hour a week. You will be watering, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, harvesting, inspecting and treating for pests and diseases, mulching and composting. These are the things your garden will need in order to thrive. So start with a small patch, see how it goes, and enlarge in future seasons as you get better and more experienced at vegetable gardening.
