How to start your first vegetable garden
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How to start your first vegetable garden
The thing that stops most people starting a veggie patch isn't the work, it's not knowing which of the hundred things they've read actually matters, so here's the short version: get the spot right, get the soil into reasonable shape, and plant something that forgives you while you're learning. Everything else you can pick up as you go, and you will, because a garden teaches you what it wants fairly quickly.
Where to put it
Vegetables want at least six hours of direct sun, and around here the aspect matters as much as the hours, because it's the west and the afternoon that bakes while north gives you good strong light without cooking anything. A bed that takes full western sun in January will want a lot more water than one facing north, so if you've got a choice, take the north-facing spot.
Put it somewhere you walk past. A patch down the back behind the shed gets forgotten, and a patch you pass on the way to the car gets watered.
Check the drainage too, because a spot that holds water after rain will drown a bed full of seedlings. If that's the only place you've got, build up rather than digging down.
Sort the soil before you plant anything
Grab a handful of damp soil and squeeze it. If it falls apart it's sandy and it won't hold water or nutrients for long. If it stays in a tight sticky ball it's clay and it needs opening up. Either way the answer starts with compost worked through the top 200mm, and a soil that's had compost in it for a couple of seasons behaves completely differently to one that hasn't.
A pH test kit is worth the small outlay before you start, because most vegetables want something between 6.0 and 7.0, and if yours is well outside that you can spend a whole season feeding a bed that simply can't take the nutrients up.
Six crops that forgive a beginner, and when to sow them
Sowing at the wrong time is the commonest reason a first patch disappoints, and it's got nothing to do with skill. These months suit our district.
- Lettuce. Sow February to November, dodging the hottest weeks. Pick leaf by leaf rather than cutting the whole plant and one sowing lasts you months.
- Radish. Sow February to November. Ready in about six weeks, which is exactly what a beginner needs to see.
- Silverbeet. Sow February to May, then again August to October. Close to unkillable and it keeps producing all winter.
- Cherry tomatoes. Sow October to December once the frost risk has gone. Far more forgiving than the big tomatoes and they crop for months.
- Zucchini. Sow October to January. Give each plant a square metre, and two plants will feed a street.
- Basil. Sow October to January, right next to the tomatoes where it belongs.
Carrots get recommended to beginners constantly and I'd leave them until year two, because they need loose stone-free soil to a decent depth and they fork and stunt in anything heavy, which reads like a failure when it's really just the bed.
Watering, which is where most first gardens go wrong
A long soak twice a week beats a light sprinkle every day, every time, because the sprinkle only wets the top and the roots stay up there where they cook. Water early in the morning so it gets into the soil before the heat takes it and the leaves dry off during the day, and push a finger in to the second knuckle before you turn the tap on at all, because damp at 5cm means the bed doesn't need you.
Give them room
Crowded plants grow weak, hold humid air between them and bring on fungal problems, and it's tempting to squeeze in extras because the seedlings look so small when you plant them. Follow the spacing on the seed packet. It isn't optimistic, it's the size the plant ends up.
Pests, without going straight to a spray
Walk the patch every few days and pick caterpillars and snails off by hand, because on a small bed that genuinely works and it costs nothing. Marigolds through the bed help, ladybirds and lacewings will do a lot of the aphid work for you if you don't spray them out of existence, and snail pellets are worth having for the bad weeks as long as you keep them where the dog and the kids can't get at them.
Shop related products
- Naturally Good Garden Soil, 50L. For filling a new bed properly the first time.
- Brunnings Ultimate Dig It In Compost 30L. The one to work through before you plant.
- Manutec Soil pH Test Kit. Tells you in ten minutes whether the bed can use what you feed it.
- Neutrog Whoflungdung Mulch 20kg. Goes on once the seedlings are up.
Did you know we also keep vegetable seed by the packet, seed raising mix, watering cans and garden hand tools in the shop, and most of that isn't on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.
The bagged range is in our garden centre, and if you tell us which way your patch faces we'll tell you what we'd put in it first.
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Still learning, same as everyone, and still sowing things a fortnight later than I meant to.
Cheers,
Candeece
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