Introduction to Vegetable Gardening

Gardening is healthy, fun and and can be very tasty and economical if you're growing food. It can be fairly simple and easy to grow a small garden or in my case a full blown operation that consumes a great deal of time. I have been at it for 37 years now and have accumulated many skills, tricks, and techniques that make growing food for me and my family a very rewarding hobby. I would like to share a lot of my secrets here and encourage more folks to take up this great hobby - hey it's more cost effective than golfing.

I started off gardening at my grandparents house when I was 20 years old. At first it was a modest size garden approximately 10x30 feet and I concentrated on the basics - lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, beans, etc. I enjoyed it so much I quickly began expanding and before I knew it I had a 50x50 garden of elevated beds separated by straw and wooden planks. I increased the variety of vegetables to include things like eggplant, pole beans, red beets, and many cole family vegetables such as cabbage and broccoli. Eventually I married, purchased a home, and moved my operation to my new backyard. Except now I took gardening to a new level and built raised beds. My new garden started off with 15 beds and has now expanded to a 40x50 lot with over 25 raised beds enclosed with a deer and rodent fence. The beds are mostly separated by river jack but about one third is surrounded by wood chips. Here's what it looks like now.

In my next post I'll discuss the pro's and con's of conventional gardening versus raised bed gardening and river jack versus wood chips or other organic ground cover. I'll also tell you the quickest way to throw a few raised beds into your backyard and begin pulling in fresh produce.