Many people love the idea of growing their own vegetables. The satisfaction of eating food you have grown, creating meals for the family that are nutritious and saving money on your grocery bill. Whether you have a large house and garden with plenty of room for designing a backyard vegetable garden or you live in a small space with very little room using containers or window boxes, you can grow your own vegetables, you just need the right design. This article looks at your options when designing a vegetable garden and gives you some things to think about.
Location
First of all when designing a vegetable garden you need to think about where it is going to go. You need somewhere that has plenty of space in an area that is not shaded as the plants need sunlight. You also need to consider drainage as well. If you have such a place in your garden to put a vegetables patch you also need to make sure you can get to all the plants. Have paths in between the different vegetable patches or stepping stones so you can reach the whole area and do the maintenance and harvesting.
Beds or rows
In more traditional vegetable gardens the vegetables are planted in rows, which is particularly suitable for foods like beans or corn, but you do not have to stick with this. Traditional rows mean you can reach the produce easier and weed but another option that gives you easy access are raised beds. Raised beds have better drainage too and keep the vegetable area more compact and looks neat and organized. Something like a three foot wide raised bed would work putting the soil between eight to twelve inches above ground level. To raise the beds use something like bricks or lumber blocks.
Plant combinations
When you are at the stage in designing a backyard vegetable garden of choosing which vegetables to grow you need to be aware some combinations help the growth of the plants, and some combinations do the opposite. For example do not plant potatoes or broccoli with tomatoes, or onions with beans. You might also decide to combine vegetable plants with flowering ones, especially if you are working with raised bed gardening. This way you get the visual aspect of the flowers as well as the practical produce of the vegetables. Use flowers like azaleas or lavender as a border for your lettuce or cabbage for example. Put fences around it and plant climbing roses.
Living with little space
If you do not have a lot of garden space so cannot have your own vegetable plot consider designing a vegetable garden in containers on a balcony, in window boxes or on the window sill. Make sure it is somewhere that gets the maximum amount of sunlight possible and choose vegetables that can do well in small places such as cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, vertical growing vegetables like beans or snow peas. Or grow your own herb garden. Make sure if you use containers you put holes in the bottom and allow for drainage.