How to Grow Your Own Vegetable Garden

Tanya Torres • May 07, 2020
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

We all have thought about growing our own vegetable garden, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic currently happening in the world. Nowadays, going to the store has become increasingly difficult because of all the restrictions and the possibility of becoming sick. Before the pandemic, it was a tedious task that not a lot of people wanted to complete but these days it is something that we all want to do just to get out of our homes. Finding any kind of food or other necessities has also become extremely hard which is why preparing a garden of our own can make things feel less chaotic and more in our control. It is an understandable response to the chaos around us and it one that can really benefit our lives in many ways which is why we have created a list on how to get started in our dry climate city. 


Choosing the Right Location
When we decide to finally add a garden in our backyard then there are a lot of key factors that go into it before we finally begin creating our ideal garden. We can’t just plop down on the ground and begin shoveling dirt and placing seeds. Finding the correct location for our vegetable garden or any kind of garden is extremely important. For example, most vegetables will need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight every day so a sunny location is an ideal area for your veggie garden. Another factor in having a successful vegetable garden is to choose a location that has a leveled surface of soil without rocks to prevent the veggies from being in pools of water. Lastly, our city sometimes deals with a lot of harsh dust storms and heavy winds which can lead to a lot of damages in the vegetable garden. To avoid ruining our gardens, we need to pick a location in our backyard that will protect our garden from harmful weather and heavy foot traffic. 


Choosing the Right Vegetables for You
Sometimes we just want to plant everything, especially when we first start out in gardening. However, growing a vegetable garden takes time and consideration in choosing the ideal veggies for our needs. Instead of adding any kind of vegetable to our garden, we need to consider if we will actually eat them and avoid overplanting. Although we can plant as many of the same vegetables as we want, sometimes we won’t be in the mood for all of those veggies which is why we recommend only planting a handful of them. Another way to decide on what kind of vegetable to plant in our gardens is to consider the availability of these veggies in stores and which vegetables are better when home-grown like lettuce and tomatoes. Lastly, planting home-grown herbs can save us a lot of money if we like to use a lot of herbs when cooking and it can save us a trip to the store. 

High-Quality Seeds
We can put a lot of time and money into our vegetable gardens and when our plants do not germinate then it feels like it was a waste of time. Sometimes plants do not germinate because we might have used seed packets that are not of high-quality. Instead of purchasing less expensive seeds, we can buy straight from a nursery to receive high-quality seeds that will pay off in the long run. 

Arranging Your Vegetables
Arranging our plants can be really simple if we are only planting a few plants, but if we decide to grow a full garden then it is important to know where each vegetable will go and when each needs to be planted. For example, during the cool-season like springtime it is the ideal time to begin growing spinach, lettuce and root veggies while in the hotter season, we can begin growing peppers, tomatoes and so on. It is also important to plant the cool season crops after the “spring frost” and then plant the warm season veggies in the exact location later on in the season. It is also crucial to avoid blocking sunlight from smaller plants with taller plants. To avoid doing this, we will have to plant the taller plants on the north side of the garden so the smaller plants can receive the same amount of sunlight during the day as the taller ones. 


Tanya Torres is a content writer for Brian Burds at Century 21 Haggerty who has written several publications as a freelance writer for KISS-FM, Fusion Magazine, El Paso Times and so on.

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