“Vegetable Gardening as a Hobby”
One of the more popular and healthy hobbies today is vegetable gardening. As a matter of fact, 1/3 of the population is currently engaged in this pastime.
Vegetable gardening isn’t a difficult task. To begin with, even your little children can try this hobby because of the simplicity of the rules that must be followed in order to fully enjoy this pastime.
The first step in vegetable gardening as a hobby is choosing the right spot to plant.
You don’t need a wide space. Instead, what you should consider are the following: choosing the site, deciding what to plant, and laying out the garden site, and preparing the site using seed and/or seedlings.
When choosing the site, do remember the following: make sure that your garden is near your house so that the vegetables are fresh when gathered; make sure that your plants will receive enough sunshine; the proximity of water sources (faucet for example); and good soil.
In deciding which seeds to plant, it’s best to consider which vegetables will grow with the kind of environment that you have. For example if you live in New England, the date you could actually start to plant would be later in the season then someone planting in the South.
This means you need to pay close attention to the amount of growing time a plant needs from planting the seed in the soil to when that plant is ready for harvest. These directions can be found on the actual seed package in days.
If you purchase seedlings, meaning you have young plants ready for immediate planting into your backyard garden, then you can save yourself anywhere from three weeks to about a month ahead of time for your first harvest.
Some times you are better off paying a little more money on seedlings to save yourself more time and less work for the growing season.
Limit yourself to just a few varieties of vegetables this year, especially if this is your first year planting a vegetable garden. This way you can concentrate on nurturing your vegetables and not become over burdened by planting too many varieties of vegetables.
There are two kinds of garden layouts. First is row cropping. In row cropping, the plants are arranged in a long line. One of the advantages of row cropping is that it is easier to cultivate because hoes and tillers are used on the long straight rows.
The disadvantage to this type of planting is, you end up wasting space and this minimizes how many vegetables you can plant in a given space of your garden.
On the other hand row cropping, for the hobby vegetable gardener, enables you more space for working around your new vegetables. Especially if this is your first year giving vegetable gardening a try.
Row cropping will enable you to experiment with the variety of vegetables you choose and allow you to experiment with different ideas with out being perfect on how closely spaced, how straight, or how far apart, your vegetables are once they grow and become established.
The second kind of garden layout is Intensive cropping. It makes use of several techniques in close planting such as planting in bands from one to four feet across and dividing the space into four sections with spaces between them.
This type of planting is a bit more labor intensive and does not give you that extra space for working around your vegetables.
Intensive cropping maximizes your vegetable garden space. You will be able to plant more vegetables per square foot garden. This means you will need to really stay on top of your weeding and thinning out of plants as they grow and become established.
This will reduce the chance of your vegetables becoming overcrowded and choking each other out. You will have less room for experimenting but if done correctly, you will have a larger harvest in return.
Why not take up vegetable gardening as a hobby this year? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain in knowledge, and a healthier life style by starting your first backyard vegetable garden this year.
If you find that you are so successful this year and you harvest more vegetables than you know what to do with, don’t worry, you can always can your vegetables this fall.
Just think of all those fresh vegetables you and your family will be able to enjoy throughout the fall and winter season after such a successful growing season.
For those who would like the idea of fall vegetable canning this year, but are not sure how to can vegetables, feel free to download my free fall vegetable canning ebook on this site.
So I challenge you, take up vegetable gardening as a hobby this year and reap the benefits of a healthier life style, a chance to get out of the house and away from your busy life of always running around, and a chance to appreciate what mother nature has to offer.
Take the time to learn about the plants in your vegetable garden and come harvest time, you will be rewarded ten fold.
The harvest you gain will be equivalent to the amount of time you are willing to put into growing and nurturing your plants. But the most important points, be creative, stimulate your mind enjoy your new healthy hobby.
This article on Vegetable Gardening as a Hobby is brought to you by www.backyard-gardening.com
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Tags: fall_vegetable_canning, germination, intensive_cropping, maturity, planting_seeds, row_cropping, seedlings, soil, spacing, thinning, weeding
The funny thing is that gardening started out as a little hobby for me. Now, whenever the season arrives, I garden like a madman. The exciting thing is seeing a plant fully grown after all the work put into growing it.
I understand those feelings, especially when the warm weather arrives for the planting season. It really motivates you to get out there and get some exercise.
Nothing beats watching a small plant mature from the beginning of the growing season to provide you with the fruits of your labor.