Turning Your Backyard Into A Vegetable Garden

Turning your backyard into a vegetable garden is a good way to save money and give you nutritious food at the same time. All you need is a backyard, some basic tools and a little imagination.

Tools: spade or flat shovel, garden rake, garden hoe.

Instructions

First choose the spot in your backyard that would be the best place for your garden. Look for an area of your yard that is sunny and doesn’t have any shade. Most plants will need between 6 – 8 hours of full sunlight.

Next decide what you want to have in the garden. This will help you determine the garden size because some plants require space as much as two feet apart with rows being at least three feet apart. Look on the back of seed packs for room requirements of plants.

If you are only going to plant a plot about 20 x 20 but want several varieties of plants, I would recommend you use a space saving technique such as a trellis. This works well with cucumbers.

You can buy either seed starting kits or plants ready for transplant. If you choose to go the seed route, these plants are best raised inside your home and will take between 4 – 8 weeks before you can transplant them into your garden. Some seeds like squash or cucumbers can be planted directly into the garden. Just plant these seeds about six inches apart and you can thin them out once they start growing. Be sure to follow the instructions on the seed packets.

After you have chopped out your garden spot and removed the grass and debris, use your hoe to make rows. Make sure your garden spot has good drainage.  You can add a soaking hose either on top or beneath the ground to deliver water to the roots of your plants once they begin growing.

Fertilizers can be purchased at any plant store. Apply them according to the manufacturer’s instructions.