If you’re looking for ways to save money and eat healthier this year, then consider planting a vegetable garden at home! They look great and will provide you with delicious food.  A $2 tomato plant can provide you with 10lbs of delicious, fresh food in a single season! Most people say that vegetables grown at home often exceed the both the flavor and texture of food bought in a grocery store. The best part about vegetable gardens though would be their low barrier of entry and low upkeep difficulty. Once you finish this blog you should be ready to get out there and start your first garden!

Where to Start?!

There are many things to take into consideration when planning a vegetable garden.  It can seem a little overwhelming at first.  From growing cycles to watering time, allotment size to proper spacing and planting calendars, it’s enough to make anyone’s head spin! Learning what to plant, when and how to tend them can seem like a daunting task, but don’t worry, we have the basics covered for you!

What to Plant

To determine how much space you need, figure out how much space a typical plant will take out. Howstuffworks.com has a great guide HERE that details how much space each plant will take up. Remember that certain plants will continue to provide food throughout the season such as tomatoes, peppers, and squash. Strategically plan how many of these plants you want in your garden to prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed and potentially wasting vegetables!

What are the easiest vegetables to grow for a beginner though? Here, we put together a list of the 10 easiest vegetables to grow in New England.

If you’re a first-time gardener, pick out a few of the plants above that you or your family would love.  Take some time to sketch out what your plot will look like on graph paper.

Where to Plant

When it comes to vegetable gardens, there are three main rules for planting:

1. Full Sun
2. Plenty of Water
3. Good Soil

Full Sun – Vegetables typically require 6-8 hours of sunlight a day. If they don’t get enough sunlight,  they tend to under-produce and are more susceptible to insects and diseases.

Plenty of Water – Most vegetables are not very drought tolerant.  They will need a nice steady stream of water to stay healthy and vibrant.   You can help make this part of the job easier on yourself if you locate your garden close to a water source.

Good Soil – We say it all the time at Koopman – “Success Starts with Soil.” This is certainly true with vegetable plants. Moist, well-drained soil that’s rich in organic material is the best start that you can give your garden.  Pay attention to the soil’s pH level and enrich it with organic feed such as compost.

We recommend planting as close to the house as you can for two reasons. As we mentioned before, this allows you quick access to a water source. It also makes harvest time easier.

Layout the Garden

We’re going to use a common technique on this garden called “Row Cropping”. This is exactly what you would expect a garden to look like, rows of vegetables with walking paths in between. this works best for medium to large gardens and allows you get in mechanical weeders to take care of the nitty gritty.

Plant each row about 18″ apart to provide the optimal amount of walking space between your plants and gives you a chance to see the plant from every angle if you should need to inspect it up close. Make sure that the taller plants (should you be planting tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, ect.) are planted on the north side so they don’t block your other plants from getting sunlight!

Having Good Soil

As we noted earlier, healthy soil will have the proper pH level and contain plenty of organic matter. If you need your soil’s pH tested, bring a coffee can size sample from about 4″ below the surface down to Koopman Lumber.  We’ll test it for you! We’ll also give you a recommendation on fertilizer and other great and safe soil additives that will help keep your garden nice and healthy.

Next you’ll want to test how well the soil drains. Soak the soil with a hose, wait a day, then dig up a handful of the soil. Squeeze it hard (as you would a rag) and check to see if water comes streaming out. If it does, the soil is not draining well.  You should to add compost or organic materials to improve the drainage.

With the same handful of dirt, open your hand and examine the consistency of the soil. If the soil has formed a nice little ball (or is for lack of better terms, clumpy) then you shouldn’t have to worry about soil consistency. If the soil doesn’t form a ball or if the ball is fragile and easily broken, then your soil is probably too sandy. Add in 3 to 4 inches of organic compost. On the other hand if the ball is too hard and doesn’t break up, your soil may have too much clay! Adding organic compost is also the best fix in this situation.

Digging Your Beds

Before you can begin planting a vegetable garden you will need to turn over your soil. This mixes the nutrients and makes the ground more suitable for planting.  You can do this rather easily by renting a tiller from Koopman Lumber.  If your garden is rather small, you can dig it up manually.  Loosen the soil and work any amendments (compost and well-rotted manure) into the soil. As much as possible, avoid stepping on the soil as much as possible to prevent compacting it and ruining all your hard work! When you’re done digging, smooth out the soil with a garden rake and water thoroughly. Let the bed rest for several days before planting.

Long-term Care and Feeding

Once your vegetables have been planted, watering is your most important gardening task. Your plants should get at least one inch of water a week. If there hasn’t been enough rain fall, you should water whenever the top inch of your soil is dry.

Weeds compete with your vegetables for water and nutrients.  Do our best to keep them out of the garden.  It’s also helpful to a hoe or a hand rake to continually disturb the top layer of soil, which discourages weed growth.  One weed preventer that we often recommend and have also found helpful in our own gardens is Preen.  You can read our full blog post about this terrific gardening aid here.

All edible plants remove some nutrients from the soil.  Some have such huge appetites that they will quickly exhaust the soil (and then produce a poor crop) without the help of fertilizer. Fertilizing is especially helpful early on, when plants are making fast new growth. You can mix fertilizer into individual planting holes, work it into furrows, or use a turning fork to mix it into beds. You can also apply a liquid fertilizer.

Always follow the rates given on the fertilizer label when deciding how much to use. Too much fertilizer can be worse than too little! Overfed plants often grow huge, yet bear a light crop late in the season.

Wrap Up

A home vegetable garden is a great addition to any yard and any dinner table! From seeds to cultivators, watering cans to shovels, fertilizer to hoses, rototillers to gardening gloves; Koopman has everything that you need to succeed in growing your own vegetable garden.  We hope you enjoyed this blog.  Stop in and see us at any of our conveniently located Koopman stores and check us out online at Koopmanlumber.com