STEP-BY-STEP PLANNING OF YOUR FIRST VEGETABLE GARDEN

Having your own garden is both rewarding and fun. All you require to get started is some a few plants and good soil. But to become a successful vegetable gardener, it takes to keep your garden vigorous and healthy.

The basics you need to know-

To feed the soil is a must for organic gardeners. Although different mineral nutrients and fertilizers should be combined regularly to the garden, the most useful material for maintaining and building a well-balanced and healthy soil is organic matter, like compost, animal manures, and shredded leaves.

The area of your garden i.e. the amount of sunlight it gets, closeness to a source of water, and protection from frost is important.

There are 2 primary approaches to planning the design of a vegetable garden:

·       Row Cropping -This is basically what comes to mind when you decide about what to grow in a garden with vegetables. You put plants single file in rows, leaving a walking space between every row.Row cropping is best for big vegetable gardens and makes it easier to use a mechanical device like tillers to battle weeds.

·       Intensive cropping -This kind of making a garden with vegetables means doing in wide bands, usually 1-4 feet across and as long as you wish. Intensive cropping decreases the amount of space required for paths, but the nearer spacing of the plants generally means you have to weed using your hand.

 Some careful observation and keeping a record of it may teach you more about growing vegetables than any single authority or book.

Things to know before you shop flowers for your garden

Seeds or plants?
Both annuals and perennials can be sown from seed straightforwardly in the greenhouse, yet it will take a while for them to grow, shoot out and sprout - a few weeks for annuals, up to a year for perennials. To shorten this wait, you can purchase grown plants. It's ideal to purchase plants that aren't flowering yet.

Work cost

Try and maintain a record of work cost of the garden: The cost of annuals plants or any season sprout is derived from the fact that they require customary watering and treating. That is each one of those blossoms in all season takes a ton of water and supplements, and also daylight.  Perennials aren't absolutely joyful - relying upon the species and on your atmosphere and soil, they additionally require some watering and manure, yet not as much consideration as annuals. 

Shade

Just as a few plants need sunlight, some thrive under the shade but ordinarily, the less daylight you receive, the less flowers you will get; in an excess of shade the plants may grow leaves but no flowers. A few types of annuals and perennials can sprout in under eight hours a day of daylight, however you'll need to search them out. When purchasing plants, read names, seed package or index numbers carefully.

Right plant, correct spot. Frequently we fall for a bloom on its appearance, how good it might look in our garden and pay little heed to whether we can give it what it needs. Instead of falling prey too these attractive plants set up a mental plan of your garden with plants for direct sun, ground cover, shade loves and hangable. 

Organic Gardening & its benefits

Personal health and environmental are the 2 basic benefits of organic gardening that are attaining popularity. Organic is definitely in, no more organic vegetables and fruits are just for the tree-huggers. They have entered the mainstream diet vigorously.

So what are the benefits actually?

·       Taste – Fresh fruits and vegetables have an explosion of flavour that bears little similarity to the taste of market raised produce. For vegetables and fruits that do not need to be cooked, they can be tested directly in the garden.

·       Health – An organic garden has no toxic chemicals, which means that its produce is also toxic free. Organic produce has a higher mineral and vitamin content than those produced with the help of chemical herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.

·       Money – Purchasing organic produce can cost up to 50% or more over the regular market. By growing your own, will save money. Storing the excess will make your garden last long in the winter without purchasing greenhouse vegetables from the market.

·       Spiritual – While tilling the soil or planting seeds, or pulling weeds, any organic gardener thinks- being in the garden brings him closer to nature, working and watching the garden grow makes him feel he is part of something huge.

·       Environment – Lack of chemical run-off is beneficial as small insects, animals or birds are not harmed by chemical use. Organic gardeners are constantly building up the soil with organic matter. By combining organic waste into compost, you help relieve landfills since the waste will otherwise be filling up space there.

The benefits of organic gardening are much more than this. Only a few of the best ones are listed above.

10 best groundcover plants

10 best groundcover plants

Everyone thinks of a house with a garden. And even in that garden, the first thought goes to flowers. Let’s say you got your flowers, what’s next? A jungle with no space to set a foot in? Or an area left to be called mini-desert? The plants which make a garden are ground-covers. Groundcovers are attractive and fill the area which other plants won’t grow, and can be used as alternatives to high-maintenance lawns. Check these options out if you don’t really want a mini-desert:

1.       Bigroot Geranium

Scientific name: Geranium macrorrhizum

Tough and aggressive, big root is perennial and a complete step-able, stamp and tread all you like. A low-maintenance plant, it barely grows up to 1-1.5 feet tall and loves the sun. Blooms in pink, pale pink and red or variegated and can be planted in shades. It is resilient and weather tough and can survive through droughts.

2. Spotted Dead Nettle

Lamium maculatum is considered a weed by many gardeners, dead nettle is aggressive and invasive. Densely clustered, it has beautifully nettled leaves and flowers colored in white, pink and purple and it likes shade and cool.

3. Moss Rose

Absolutely adorable plant, Portulaca grandiflora or moss rose has and tiny cup-shaped colorful flowers in red, white and orange and spreads extensively all around the space with its needle-like foliage. It is highly tolerant of poor conditions and is annual or perennial.

4. Helianthemum

This sunny little plant is commonly known as ‘Sun Rose’ or even ‘Rock Rose’ and never grows taller than 1 feet. Comes in shades of orange, pink, yellow, scarlet, and white, there are some varieties that bloom for a long time from spring to autumn and disappears in cold winter but remains evergreen in warm setups.

5. Lilyturf (Liriope)

Lily is showy and tough groundcover with lush and deep green leaves with upright tufts. Spiky and beautiful flowers in shades of violet or lavender stay until the fall. Muscari and Liriope are pretty famous.

Grow it between tall shrubs and shady places, or border alongside walkways.

6. Sweet Woodruff

Fragrant and Sweet, woodruff is an excellent ground cover if you want to add a distinct aroma to the garden. It grows best in part shade and full shade with on well-drained soil and grows up to only 8-10 inches even when in bloom. Right from mid-spring, sweet woodruff blooms in great numbers all the while releasing fragrance when crushed.

7. Creeping Thyme (Lankford)

Thymus serpyllum is low-growing aromatic and flowering herb. It is perennial and like other varieties of thyme it is edible too and adds the same flavor to the food. It barely grows up to 3 inches. Interestingly, it is deer-resistant while being an amazing alternative to grass.

8. Brass Button

A perfect lawn substitute Leptinella squalida 'Platts Black' is one plant on which you can walk on without thinking much. Brass button too forms yellow-golden flowers that bloom from spring to summer. And is equally lively in temperates to subtropical climates both.

9. Creeping Phlox

With pleasant flowers with pastel hues, Creeping Phlox is a sturdy and low-maintenance plant. It can be used in landscaping difficult areas as it can grow between rocks or cascades down slopes. It can also be used as a border to flowerbeds.

10. Sedum

The genus ‘Sedum’ has a range of ornamental plants that you can grow as a ground cover in full sun. its flowers appear in summer and sedum has about 400 species which can be grown in every climate.

Ground covers are excellent for any garden and without a doubt are necessary too. I think they just tell us to never underestimate something that small.