Growing your own food is a great idea for many reasons: it will save you money, it’s a fun hobby, it will give you a sense of accomplishment and it will help you feel closer to the Earth. However, if you have never grown your own fruit and vegetables before you might have no idea where to start. Here are some tips to help you on your gardening journey. Happy sowing!
1. Be realistic
There is nothing more discouraging for the budding gardener, than being overly ambitious in your plans and then finding that you don’t have the time to tend to all your plants on a frequent basis. Make a conservative estimate of how much time you are going to be able to dedicate to gardening each week, and then choose your seeds accordingly – this article from The Clean Food Movement can help you find low-maintenance produce to grow in a variety of conditions. Equally, be realistic about the amount of fruit and vegetables that your family will eat, and don’t over-plant unless you have plenty of relatives, friends or neighbors to share your produce with!
2. Know what grows in which season
This is fairly obvious, but to ensure that you have some food from your garden all year round you need to plant a variety of vegetables and fruits which will be ready to harvest in different seasons. If you are not sure where to start, Happy Valley Seeds have categorized the vegetable seeds in their web shop by season. They also have some region-specific categories, such as ‘Indian Vegetables’, which will be very handy to help you identify the best produce for the climate in your area.
3. Make sure you keep slugs under control
Vegetables are tasty – unfortunately not just for humans, but also for pests. Slugs are particularly notorious for ruining crops and wrecking gardens, and you will need to find a strategy to keep them under control – which usually means killing them. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that you have to resort to pesticides, as there are many biological means of getting rid of slugs. One which has become popular in recent years is the use of nematodes, which are worms that parasitize slugs and kill them (if you are interested in how the whole process works, this article from The Conversation explains it in detail). You could also use slug traps – either buy them from a garden store or use scooped-out fruit halves, such as melon, orange or grapefruit. If you choose to use the trap method, however, keep in mind that you will need to check and empty them very regularly, so again – be realistic as to how much time you will be able to dedicate to your garden!
4. Choose the right location
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, in order to successfully grow any vegetables you need to sow it in the right conditions. Even within the same garden or balcony there will be spots more or less suited to different kinds of food, due for instance to how much sunlight and shade they receive!
