A vegetable garden is a real pleasure when you get a good start to it, but sometimes the weather takes a turn you just aren’t ready for. Things heat up fast and suddenly your perfect garden is wilting and dying.

It’s a painful thing to see, but don’t accept defeat immediately. You may still be able to save quite a bit of your garden.

The first thing is to stay very aware of your garden. This can be hard to do if you end up working extra hours and just kind of miss that the weather has changed and your plants need more water. But do your best.

I’ve had experience with this kind of thing, although it wasn’t from work. We went on vacation at a time when the summer had been extremely mild. While we were gone the weather turned unusually hot. We hadn’t arranged for anyone to give the garden extra water in that event, and so we came home to a nearly dead garden.

But if you catch these things soon enough, some of it can be salvaged. Try to give your vegetable garden at least an inch of water every week, especially as your vegetables grow.

I suggest getting a soaker hose. These allow you to put the water right onto the soil rather than spraying it into the air. You’ll still want to water first thing in the morning or in the evening so as to minimize evaporation, but doing this can help you to cut your water bill by not spraying so much water into the air.

This is especially good for squash and other plants that aren’t terribly fond of having water on their leaves. On the other hand, tomatoes do like water on their leaves, and you may want to use the sprinkler on them a little more.

One thing you will want to be aware of is how hot weather impacts the taste of the vegetables you harvest. Excessively hot weather can change the taste of crops such as broccoli and cauliflower, for example. Harvest as necessary to get the best produce from your garden. Some herbs may try to go to flower, but you can cut these off to try to continue their growth.

On the other hand, hot peppers love to grow in warm weather.

A hot spell doesn’t have to be a disaster for your garden. Be aware of the weather and start giving extra water before problems appear. You can continue to have a delightful vegetable garden that will survive the heat.

And don’t forget to check the Home Vegetable Gardening Guide for more tips on having a beautiful vegetable garden.

Technorati Tags: hot weather, heat wave, summer, summer gardening

Planting a vegetable garden is a real delight. You get fresh produce, fresh air and light exercise. And it doesn’t require a huge back yard to do successfully. Even a small yard or deck is sufficient.

The first thing you need to do is figure out how much space you have for a vegetable garden. This will in part determine what you can grow. Some plants take more room or need more sunlight.

With your space considerations in mind you can start looking at the plants you want to grow. If you’re focusing on containers, tomatoes are a popular choice. Some people even hang them in a planter with a hole in the bottom, with the tomato plant hanging upside down out from the hole.

If you are planting your garden in the ground, you will want to be prepared to battle weeds. Start out by clearing all the weeds out before you start your garden. Get as many of the roots out as possible.

On the other hand, if you are starting from containers your main concern will be choosing appropriately sized containers. Your garden center professionals should be able to help you choose these as well as the appropriate potting soils.

Depending on how early or late you start, you may have the option of starting from seeds or heading over to the garden center to pick out young plants for your garden. Picking already started plants is much easier in many ways, and some centers guarantee the plants, so if they die you can get a refund or replacement.

Some of the work you will do for your garden will depend on your situation and what you want to do. If you want to go organic, starting your own compost pile is a good idea, provided you have the room. If you want minimal effort, you won’t want plants that need special attention. All plants need water, of course.

You will have to keep special watch on your plants when the hottest days of summer strike. A few hot days can cause your entire garden to wilt if you aren’t paying enough attention to soil moisture levels.

There are few pleasures like fresh vegetables from your own garden. Veggies from the grocery store simply cannot compare. There’s also the simple pleasure of making plants grow. It’s an activity you can enjoy alone or with your entire family.

In fact, it isn’t that easy, as my 5 year old has discovered. She loves to plant seeds, but only once has one of them actually come up. It was a pumpkin, one of literally dozens from her Halloween pumpkin, and the plant is now thriving.

In case you’re wondering, no, she doesn’t get much supervision for her experiments. Digging in the dirt is just something fun to let her do. But if she had her way, we’d have an apple tree, peach tree, nectarine tree, cucumbers and pretty much every other fruit or vegetable that you buy regularly from the grocery store growing in our yard.

But when you do want your plants to grow, you need to know what to do besides put them in soil and add water. And that’s where an ebook such as Home Vegetable Gardening can come in handy.

This ebook will help you with planning, preparing, protecting and harvesting from your own garden. You’ll find that some vegetables are much easier to grow where you live than others. You’ll learn about how to garden successfully.

This ebook comes with bonuses, and I’m going to tell you my favorite. The ebook on organic gardening. I love organic gardening. I get great results from it, and it’s so nice to not have to buy fertilizers or spray for pests. It’s a bit more work, but I find it quite worthwhile on both a personal and an environmental level.

But perhaps most important is that the ebook comes with a great guarantee. You are promised that if you cannot grow a successful vegetable garden with the tips in this ebook, you get your money back. You have eight full weeks to decide. There isn’t any risk to you. If you still have your doubts, you can try the free vegetable gardening report to get just a taste of what’s in store, but I really suggest buying the book to get the most benefit.
Order today and take a look for yourself.

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Whether you suffer through harsh, cold winters or enjoy relatively mild ones, we are coming up on the time when you need to get ready to plant your seeds for your vegetable garden.

If you need another compost bin this time of year is great to add them, if only because there’s not much actual gardening work to do. Build one or buy one, just make sure you can easily add, remove and turn the material.

Clean up your tools. Sharpen blades if they need it. Clean off old dirt and wipe with an oiled cloth to help prevent rusting.

At this time you can also start planning your next garden. You can figure out what you want to grow and how you’re going to lay that garden out. Planning ahead can help you make the most of your garden. Getting things started at the right time for each type of plant will help your garden succeed.

If you want an early start, get some planters and sun lamps and start your seeds indoors. If you get sufficient sunlight, placing the boxes in windows can help you get that early start too.

This is a great time for looking back at how your garden did last year and your goals for this year. For example, my garden last year failed miserably due to a combination of poor soil, a neighboring shade tree that had been shading my garden being cut to pieces and an unusually hot summer.

Over the winter we’ve been preparing quick compost for the soil. This is just throwing fresh kitchen scraps into the blender with some water, then pouring it into the garden. It’s our first step in improving the soil naturally. More will be done as planting time approaches.

Obviously, factors that are out of your control you can’t do anything about. Heat waves cannot be avoided and neighbors can be unpredictable (you should have seen that poor tree when they were done “pruning” it!). Some years insects are more problematic than others.

In those cases you need to have plans for how to handle it. Keep an eye on what the sun is doing to your plants during a heat wave and ensure they have enough water. Know what pest control steps you are willing to take.

Planning and preparing to plant your garden before you can actually start planting gives you a lot of advantages when it’s time to really work your garden. It gets some of the chores out of the way and leaves you prepared for a great start to your vegetable garden.

Technorati Tags: vegetable garden, get ready for spring

So you’ve decided to take the plunge and grow your own vegetable garden. Maybe it’s because you want organically grown produce without the high prices found at the store, maybe you want to show your kids where food comes from or maybe you just finally have room!

Whatever the reason, you want to read up on what you need to get done and keep things under control. Getting too ambitious with a vegetable garden can leave you overwhelmed and limit your ability to enjoy the produce.

Start with a reasonably small garden, say 8×10 feet at most. Gardening and weeding are hard work and until you know you enjoy it you don’t want the gigantic garden.

You’ll want an area in your yard with a lot of sunlight, the more the better. Most vegetables really love sunlight.

The very first step is to till your soil. You can rent a tiller, borrow from a neighbor or do some heavy work with just hand tools. But that soil needs to be well worked and soft. You do not need to remove the sod… in fact, you are best off working it into the soil.

The type of soil you have will determine what you do next. If it’s mostly clay or sandy, you will need to invest in some topsoil or at least a good quantity of compost or manure to mix into it. You want to improve the quality of your soil. This can take a few years of adding compost every spring and fall.

Next you want to plan your garden. Research the seeds you want and figure out how much space they will take. You do not want to crowd your plants or you won’t have a good harvest. Don’t forget to leave room to work in your garden.

If you want something simple to grow, start out with things like peas, beets, squash and the infamous zucchini. If you’ve ever had a neighbor grow zucchini you may have had some of the excess handed off to you. It’s one of those plants that really produces when it gets going.

If frost is a problem in your area, make sure you plant after the last frost is expected. Otherwise your garden can be wiped out. When in doubt do research on your area to find out when it is probably safe to start planting. There are no guarantees in gardening, especially when it comes to weather, but you have to do your best.

Critter and pest control can be a major problem. I’ve read that plastic snakes, moved about periodically, can be quite effective at keeping out rabbits, and for other animals chicken wire can work. Insect control can be more challenging, especially if you’re trying to go organic, so you may want to read up on natural pest control.

Heat waves can be a major problem for your garden. Make sure your soil is appropriately moist… if your plants are wilting they are much too dry. Don’t over water your garden, however. So long as the soil is moist a little ways under the top level you are generally doing well.

You probably won’t become a master gardener in your first year but you will learn a lot. And when your vegetables ripen you will love the flavors which are so much better than that which you can get at the grocery store.

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Of course, not all vegetables will do well in containers. But quite a number will do rather well, as many vegetable plants really don’t grow all that large.

Tomatoes are perhaps the classic vegetable to grow in a container. They do well in at least 5 gallon buckets. Sugar lumps are a personal favorite. They’re really small, around 3/4 to 1-1/2 inches in diameter and grow in clusters. They’re just fun to pick and eat.

While most of my garden this past year really didn’t go too well, our beans did adequately. They were grown in a window box style container placed on the ground, with a trellis attached to the house for them to climb.

Broccoli can do pretty well at about one plant per 5 gallon container. Growing this at home can be a great way to get the kids to eat it.

So long as the soil is at least a foot deep, you can even grow carrots in containers. After all, they don’t so much need a lot of soil around them as they do need deep soil, at least to the depth they want to grow. Similarly, beets, onions and garlic can be grown in containers so long as you give them the depth they need.

Lettuce, cabbage, spinach, cauliflower… any of these can be grown in containers. It’s just a matter of giving them the right size container and not crowding them.

There’s really nothing like growing your own vegetables, and a yard is not a prerequisite. What you really need is sunshine, dirt and dedication. Ok, seeds, water and all that help too.

Technorati Tags: vegetables, garden, indoor garden, gardening, vegetable gardening

Just for fun (actually because it began to rot so soon), my husband took our uncut Halloween pumpkin to the back yard and cut the top off. He gave our daughter a choice – fill the top with a few seeds and some dirt or plant the seeds in the ground.

Of course she chose both. What did you expect? She’s 4!

It will be interesting to see how they grow, if they grow and so forth. This is more of a whim than an actual attempt at growing pumpkins. If they grow, great, if not that’s fine too.

My daughter loves planting seeds just about at random. Obviously most don’t sprout. She has planted apple seeds, a nectarine seed and a few others I can’t think of right now.

Since this is the time of year when we take a break from serious gardening, especially after as poor a growing season as we had past summer, it’s fun to give control over to my daughter. She imagines she will grow all this stuff, and most of it won’t do anything at all. Fortunately, kids just love trying and failure doesn’t really matter.