How to Start your own Vegetable Garden

Have been wanting to start growing your own groceries for awhile now, but don’t know where to start?

Starting your first garden may seem overwhelming but with a few easy steps and a plan, you can set yourself up for a bountiful garden with fresh vegetables all season long!

While starting a vegetable garden is a lot easier than you may think, there are a few things you should plan and consider before breaking ground.  Considering and planning for these few points will get you off to a great start and help you see a bountiful harvest in no time.

Benefits of starting your own vegetable garden

There are many reasons as to why having a garden is beneficial to your entire family.  The benefits range from being a good physical activity to providing some wonderful tactile therapy for depression and anxiety.

Getting your whole family involved in the gardening process is a wonderful way to introduce more family time.  There is a duty and responsibility for every member of the family.  Everyone can get involved and contribute to feeding the family.

Here are a few of them:

• Have access to fresh food at your fingertips.
• Great activity for the whole family. There is a job for everyone!
• Teaches kids many different skills and values such as patience, hard work, and problem solving.
• Encourages food awareness and appreciation for where food comes from and how it is grown.
• Learning food skills ensures that they will never go hungry.
• Wonderful outdoor activity.
• Allows them to become more self-sufficient and join the self-reliance movement.

Vegetable Garden Basics

Starting a vegetable garden can seem very overwhelming because there are many decisions that need to be made before you can even break ground!  Some of these decisions seem like they could make or break your success.  Good news is, that if you make a few important decisions very carefully and plan diligently before starting, a bountiful garden is much more achievable!

A few important decisions to make:

• When to plant
• What to plant
• Where to plant
• Seeds or Starters
• Tools and Equipment

Taking some extra time to consider these points will make all the difference. I walk you through all of it in this post.

You can also grab my FREE Vegetable Garden Guide to download to have this information easily available, as well as, some really handy plotting graphs, and observation sheets for taking notes throughout the season.

GRAB THE FREE GUIDE BELOW:

When do you plant your vegetable garden?

One of the most common questions that I get about starting a vegetable garden is: When can I put the plants in the ground?

Knowing your growing dates is very important in order to avoid planting too early and risking a frost that may kill your vegetables or planting too late which could result in late harvest or none at all.

One of the first things you want to do when planning your first vegetable garden is to get familiar with your growing location.

You want to determine the following:

• Growing zone, also referred to as your harvesting zone
• Last freeze date
• First freeze date

I like to use the Old Farmer’s Almanac for researching this information.  Just input your zip code and you will get a lot of useful information about growing in your area.

The United States is broken up into growing zones which are based on average climate.  Knowing your growing zone is great when troubleshooting problems, determining what plants will thrive in your specific area, identifying plants or pests, and determining a successful planting and growing timeline.

Your freeze dates are also very important to research.  Knowing your first and last freeze dates are necessary for determining a successful timeline.  Your first freeze date is the average date in the fall that you may experience freezing temperatures overnight that could kill any frost intolerant plants.  It is important to do any harvesting of the plant before this dates.  Working back from this date will help you determine the last date for planting a specific vegetable by considering its growing timeframe.

Your last freeze date is the average date in the spring that you can expect your last winter freeze.  You will want to be careful planting any frost intolerant vegetables prior to this date and the freezing temperatures may kill them off.

I typically take a look at my estimated last freeze date and plan to get may vegetables in the ground about a week later.  Of course, I continue to monitor the overnight temperatures for about a week out before I actually break ground and plant them. For us, our last freeze date is mid to late April, so typically a rule of thumb for my area is to get your garden in around Mother’s Day.

What to grow

Another decision you must make before putting anything in the ground is what you are going to plant.  It is so easy to go overboard and be temptedto grow every plant imaginable but that is is unrealistic.   

We made this mistake our first year gardening,  I bought just about every plant I found at the store and threw them in my garden.  Needless to say, many of them were unsuccessful and we wasted a lot of harvest.

To determing what plants you should spend the time, space, and money on growing, you should as yourself the following questions:

• What vegetables do I buy the most?
• What vegetables do I but the least?
• What vegetables are the most expensive in the store?
• What vegetables are hard to find?

Answering these questions will help you narrow down your list of vegetables to the ones you will truely benefit from and enjoy.  It will also help you avoid tempetation from buying all of the seeds and/or plants at the nursery when planning your garden.

Our first year, we planted radishes and eggplant.  Which we rarely eat.  I just don’t have the recipes to support them in abundance.  Since then, we don’t grow them in order to save space for something else.

Where to grow

After planning when and what you are going to plant this year, it is important to take a look at your availabel space and determing where you are going to plant.

There are many options for where to plant your garden.  You can utilize an in-ground garden plot, raised beds, containers, or existing landscapes for planting your vegetables.  All of these options have benefits that may depend on your available area.

Raised beds and a garden plot are great if you have a larger property but for small spaces and first year gardens, I definitely recommend starting with containers.

Containers will offer you the most flexibility without deciding on a permanent location.  Using containers for the first year will allow you to observe your area, test some things out, and provide more information for you to make a more permanent decision the following year.

Containers are also great for small spaces, patios, or even balconies.  They can be moved around if necessary and the posibilities of small space options utilizing containers are endless.

Grab my FREE Planning guide for a step by step process for choosing the ideal location for your garden.

Grab that here: FREE Garden Planning Guide

Should you start your plants from seed or buy plants?

For anyone starting your first garden, I definitely recommend grabbing some plants from the nursery and trying that for a few years before taking on starting your plants from seed.

Starting your plants from seeds yourself is not difficult but it is a step in the process that does require quite a lot of resources such as lighting equipment, heaters, plant food, and different containers.  If you really want to ensure a successful garden, I would let them do that beginning work for you so that you can better practice harvesting the food.  After a few years, I definitely recomend trying to start from seed yourself as it is a great money saver.

I typically start from seed several months before I put the plants in the ground and figure that if some of them do not survive, I can always go to the store buy the plants I need to replace them.

Choosing the right soil

Wether you are starting seeds, filling container or raised beds, or adding soil to a garden plot, it is important to use the correct soil.

The most important mistake you can make when starting a garden, in my opinion, is to use the wrong soil.  There are so many types of soil to choose from, that choosing the correct one for your garden project can be confusing.  Check out my post on garden soil here: How to Choose the Right Garden Soil for any Project

Tool and Equipment you need to get started

It is so easy to walk into a garden center and want to buy all of the cool tools and supplies that they have available but in reality, you really only absolutley need a few tools. 

Some of my must haves for gardening are:

• Garden towel and shovel
• Garden rake
• Garden pruners
• Hose with spray attachment
• Gardening gloves
• Bucket

These are the absolute essentials and you can do most gardening set up and maintenance with these.  For a more extensive list of tools and equipment that may be useful, grab my FREE garden guide.

Good luck with your garden this year! I hope you have a blessed harvest and enjoy all of the benefits that gardening can bring you and your family!