Plan Your First Vegetable Garden in 5 Easy Steps
A complete guide
Never gardened before? No worries. Make your own fresh and healthy garden, which is free from chemicals and blessed with positivity.
When I started gardening with my mom, I didn’t know how to hold shovels, and growing food on a terrace was a pretty intimidating task for me. By creating a perfect plan and under my mom’s supervision, I learned how to grow vegetables at home.
If you want to become self-reliant, then gardening is the best move for you because it gives you access to take control of your food supply.
There are so many things I want to tell you about gardening. So, without wasting any time, let’s move on to our 5 easy steps to help you create a fresh and healthy garden.
Garden as though you will live forever.” — Thomas Moore
Step 1: Creating a Vegetable Garden in Container
Container gardening is an easy way to grow vegetables at home, especially if you have a small terrace or yard. You can do container gardening even in your balcony with ease.
I recommend you use containers that can store enough water. You can use buckets, bathtubs, wooden boxes, clay pots — anything that can hold soil. Make sure to create a hole in the bottom of the container for drainage.
When growing vegetables in containers, you must water them twice a day. It would also be good if you add coral gravel in the bottom of the container for better drainage.
Step 2: Prepare the Soil
Now, get some soil and manure, and mix them with peat (It is a dark brown material developed by plants dying and used to improve soil quality). Keep this mix aside for a few days. Meanwhile, collect the peels of the vegetables and fruits in a box.
Step 3: Fill the Containers with Soil
When filling the containers with soil, make sure the bugs, weed, and pests will not enter into it. I suggest you fill only 10 to 12 inches of soil in the containers because most of the vegetables penetrate this measure only. If you add more than that, you are simply wasting your soil.
Each year you need to replace the old soil with fresh soil. However, you can use your old soil in other containers as well.
Step 4: Plant Propagation
There are several ways to get your plants. You can do it from seeds, stems, cuttings, corms, potted, and so on. Propagating plants from seeds is the best way to grow vegetables in the containers. The major methods of propagation are cutting, layering, budding, grafting, and division. I suggest you do plant propagation under the guidance of an experienced grower. My mom always watches me when I do the steam cutting.
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” — Margaret Atwood
Step 5: Vegetables Suitable for Terrace
Vegetables like tomato, potatoes, cucumber, carrots, onions, chilies, mushrooms, and lettuce can easily grow in containers. Make sure you water them twice a day so that plants grow healthy and produce fresh vegetables.
Spend an hour in your garden, look at the seeds, feel the plants’ freshness, and observe the sunlight, which boosts their growth along with watering them adequately.
“Show me your garden, and I shall tell you what you are.” — Alfred Austin
