Growing your own fruit and vegetables can be an extremely rewarding way to use your garden. There’s nothing quite like throwing together a salad when you’ve grown the ingredients yourself, or enjoying homegrown fruit for dessert. However, getting started can be tough. In this guide, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know. By the end of it, you’ll be able to “grow your own” like a fully fledged fruit and veg expert!
Small Gardens
If you have a small garden, there’s no need to panic. You can still grow fruit and veg! Veg and herbs can grow in any size garden, all you need is a sunny place to plant them. Many people even like to use containers to grow them, so you really don’t need a ton of space. Making separate beds for them is recommended, but if you are really short on space, you can plant them in flower borders.
Using Containers
Lots of vegetables will happily grow on a patio or on a balcony, you just need the right containers for them. Some of the best varieties are: tomatoes, beetroot, salad, and radishes. Fruit bushes are also ideal. Hydroponics is a particularly useful technique, where you can grow your plants in a liquid nitrogen solution with or without soil. There’s a technique for everybody.
Helpful Tips For Growing Success
- Grow fruit and veg that everybody in your household loves
- Make sure you choose a sunny spot
- Know your soil type
- Prepare the soil well – remove stones, etc
- Never sow too early
- Plan fast growing varieties in containers
- Practice crop rotation to prevent diseases
Preparing Your Soil
If you want to grow good crops, you’re going to need to make sure you prepare your soil. Most fruit and vegetables like soil that is rich, moist and well-drained, with neutral acidity. However, this can vary depending on what you choose to grow. You can dig in with organic matter to improve the structure of your soil and add nutrients.
You can simply add compost or leaf mould to grow your vegetables to begin with.
Crop Rotation
If you grow the same crop families in the same spot every year, pests and diseases will build up in the soil. This is why learning about crop rotation is a must. All you need to do is move crops around so you’re growing different types in each spot. This will also ensure that the soil does not get depleted – some plants tend to be hungrier than others, and this can cause the soil to be stripped of nutrients. Crop rotation doesn’t apply to perennial plants that stay in one place year after year like rhubarb and artichokes.
Are you ready to grow your own fruit and veg? Not only will you have more fun tending to your garden, you’ll learn a new skill and save money on your food shopping. It’ll be so easy to go into your garden and grab a few things to make a fresh side salad or even a fruit dessert!
*collaborative post
