Creating a vegetable garden is a great way to get more involved in your garden and your health. Organic vegetables made in your own backyard will be packed full of nutrients and flavour.
If you’ve never had a vegetable garden before, rest assured, it’s an easy feat – all you need is a shovel, some fertiliser or compost, and some seedlings. Here are some great ways to start off your own vegetable garden. The first thing that you need to do when building your vegetable garden is to consider where it will go. Do you have room for a patch? You will need an area that gets lots of sun and does not have to compete with the root systems of large trees and shrubs for nutrients. Try not to make your garden too big so that you’ll have to walk through it to get out the vegetables. Once you have decided where to have your vegetable patch, dig it out and put bricks around the edges to stop grass from coming in. Make the patch a little higher than the grass. Dig in some compost or fertiliser and manure to get the soil as rich as possible. Now you can plant your vegies! Go to your nursery and ask which plants would be suitable for your garden. During summer, it’s a good time to plant beetroot, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, celery, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, lettuce, parsnips, radish and sweet corn. And water them often, especially during the warmer months.
Nicola, you may also like to investigate companion planting. Some plants naturally repel insects that are attractive to others. Put them together and voila! You can also make a white oil using pure velvet soap, vegetable oil and water. The recipe is bound to be online somewhere.