#15. Golden Rules for Growing Vegetables
To start out with, gardening is a wonderful experience when you get down to it and really get stuck in. Gardening can provide you with several benefits including healthier produce, fresh vegetables, a way to save money and a way to keep you fit, to name a few.
There are some basic rules that are considered the golden rules to hold fast to when growing your own vegetables. Let us take a look at them.
• The location of your vegetable garden is very important as is the selection of vegetables you plan to grow. A vegetable garden is going to require plenty of sunlight; make no mistake about that. The minimum amount of daily sunlight requirement will be eight hours.
• When planting, choose vegetables that are companion plants to put close together. For example, regular beans will grow well with a number of other vegetables including carrots, cauliflower, cucumber and potatoes. However it will not be wise to plant beans near onions or garlic.
• Crop rotation is really very important. No good gardener will ever plant the same crop, potatoes for example, in the same bed for a second time. You've had one good season and gotten a good harvest. You have also managed to keep the pests away. However, plant the next season's potato crops in the same beds, and the chances of the pests and diseases getting at them are very high. Pests and diseases can wipe out your entire crop.
• Weeds are every gardener's nightmare. You can't afford
to rest on your laurels if you've worked hard at clearing the garden of weeds. Weeding is a constant, ongoing task. Unpleasant though it may be, it's got to be done. So long before you start your first garden, make a firm commitment where weeding is concerned. Go so far as to make up a weeding policy that includes the amount of time you will spend weeding. It can be an hour a day, but you need to stick at it.
• Avoid using diseased or pest infected vegetable parts in your compost pile. Composting these vegetables increases the possibility of the same pests or diseases surviving the composting process to re-emerge like the black plague to wreak havoc on your vegetables.
• Make sure your vegetable garden is well protected from scavenging animals and bird attacks. Erect fencing around the garden and put some scarers in your garden. There is a wide variety of animal and bird scarers available on the market or you can use your creativity and make your own.