A raised vegetable garden is not just a pretty ornament to make your garden look nice – they can produce an endless supply of healthy food with very little time. In this article I want to point out just how much time you save with a raised garden as opposed to traditional gardening techniques.

It’s so common for gardeners to plant their crops in long lines about a yard apart. However, this approach is much much more time consuming than it need be. Why? The answer is digging and weeding.

It’s not that people can’t be bothered to maintain their garden, but more that there is just not enough time in their busy lives. Usually, only when the children have grown up and left for college that the parents can start to consider growing vegetables – which is a shame as there is a great shortcut to all this hard labor….. raised bed gardens.

So why isn’t there a raised vegetable garden in every backyard? Because of tradition. Its just the way that its always been done, and hardly anyone knows the secrets of raised beds.

Planting in lines has been done for generations and generations, going right back to the agricultural revolution. This layout was first conceived to allow ploughs to be dragged over fields, and a scaled down version was adopted by gardeners. The problem is that for small spaces, this is really not that efficient in terms of both the space usage and the amount of time needed to prepare and maintain the garden.

Digging the ground is something that put off the majority of people who would love to grwo vegetables at home. If that isn’t bad enough, you’ve also got to weed the soil. But with a raised vegetable garden, you can avoid these problems completely because the plants are so tightly packed that the weeds are shaded out.

As there aren’t any pathways in between the rows, you can fit around 4 times as many crops per square foot on average. This means you can have a much more compact growing area, leaving space for sheds, patios, etc.

There are other advantages of raised vegetable gardens such as needing 80% less water, and being able to grow on bad soil, or any surface for that matter. However, the biggest reason for building a raised bed is the huge amount of time saved. It’s no joke that as much as 90% of time spent gardening can be saved. As opposed to spending over an hour on the garden each day, you only need to give it a couple of minutes.

Please click for more information on raised vegetable garden tips.

Container Gardening For Those Will Little Space.

Before we had room for an in the ground garden we gave container gardening a try. When the conditions aren’t just right where they are.

Container gardening  really gave us the opportunity to grow flowers and vegetables without having yard space. Even though we now have a large property and lots of gardening space we still do the container gardening thing because we like it.

Container Gardening On The 11th Floor

When I lived in Toronto my home was on the 11th floor. Not much garden space but I made great use of the balcony and containers.

We even have containers with both vegetables and flowers growing around our little patio. It’s so cool to reach over and pluck a strawberry or tomato while I am playing my guitar outside.

This year we are going to have a few window boxes as well. I think they will make a great herb garden that I can access directly from the kitchen window. Now that will be very cool indeed.

Container Gardening Configuration

We don’t usually group our containers as we did when we didn’t have much room but I have seen some yards that have beautiful configurations of flowers in containers. I may give that a try this year and see how we can do with a themed container garden.

A container gardening tip that works for us is to just remove the plants that have finished blooming and swap them out for another plant that is just starting to bloom. Keeps your container garden looking fresh all the time.

I have to admit that I am no designer so I have to learn from what others do. I can look at an arrangement and like it but I find it hard to create it myself. One thing I have learned is that varying heights work but never put the tall plants around the short plants so that they don’t get sunlight. That doesn’t work well in the long run.

Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Container Gardening Containers

Experiment with creative containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles.  If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don’t want your plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.

Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect.  When purchasing pots, don’t forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting. Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of plants or flowers help to create a cosy and welcoming atmosphere.

Decide ahead of time where you want your pots to be positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position, for they will not do well. Some plants also have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.

Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.

With a creative mind and some determination, you will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers alike.

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OK, you’d like large, showy plants that will mature together to form an excellent display in your yard. There are two ways of achieving this. The 1st would be to feed the plants with one of many propriety chemical feeds that promote a tremendous development having plants ten times bigger than regular and lots of giant blooms. This can probably work- for the short term.

However, after a moderately short time, the plant will have expended all its vitality and perish. Not the best display ever! It may be problematic to cultivate other plants at that place without further treatments of chemical feed. A costly plan to get into, and also time intensive. What is more, when you spill the feed upon the leaves of your plant, it looks terrible.

The next technique would be to feed the growing areas instead of the plant. It will be neither as easy or as fast to give results, however, it is certainly far better for the surroundings and in the long run will give you superior, more robust plants. This is applicable to vegetables and fruits in addition to flowers.

Most plant life, whether decorative or cullinary, trees, shrubs or plants want those same basic needs for growth. Good fertile soil, water and light. The quantity of sunlight and also types of nutritional requirements change from plant to plant however the basics are the same. We also need little insects to polinate blooms to create fruit and veggies. So in order to produce optimum conditions and produce great plants we must know what the plant needs and supply it.

1st test out the earth. Make use of a meter to determine whether it is alkaline or acid. This affects what kind of plants you can cultivate. There is no point in attempting to grow plants like azaleas in land that is alkaline, and although is is realively not difficult to include lime to soil to deminish its acidity, is quite a bit harder to get rid of it. Manage your land never against it. If you really must grow a plant not suited to your soil, grow it in a pot, however make sure you feed and water it regularly.

Look closely at the fertility of your soil. There are products that can inform you the balance of the nutrients in your land. Next look at it. Does it get water logged when you have heavy rainfall, or has it been effectively drained. And finally, look at your garden during the day. Where is it normally sun – drenched, where is it partly shady and where is it frequently in shade. Various plants appreciate differant amounts of sun. After you have got the answers to each of questions, you’ll be able to develop your plants to their entire potential with very little cost.

Before you plant, carefully prepare the soil. Dig it over to aerate it and remove any weeds and add fertiliser, whether in the form of compost or slow release proprietry fertiliser like blood, fish and bonemeal, or growmore. After that finally put your plants in. Look very carefully at your plants and choose them to fit the spot. Theres no point in placing flowers that require full sunlight next to a wall which will shade them. On the other hand there’s little profit in putting shade loving plants in full sunlight, they will just burn and perish. The whole point of looking after your garden is to obtain a really good show.

If you feed your soil rather than your plants, you’ll grow more robust, healthier plants that will create large flowers over an extended period of time without any intervention on your part. They will be more capable of resisting deseases and deter assaults by predators including aphids and if they are perennials, are more able to endure their dormant time and return the next year looking strong and ready to offer you more satisfaction, for almost no additional cost or effort. And remember, to get really good results you should always start off with the best seeds and plants.

There are lots of challenges to overcome for anyone who tries to create an organic vegetable garden. The process could take several seasons, but when results finally appear, the homegrown veggies will be the tastiest you’ve ever had. Organic gardening in fact makes the oldest form of plant cultivation, it is not at all expensive and it can be undertaken by any one preoccupied with developing a hobby or improving health. Click through here for extra info about vegetable gardening tips .

The size of the organic vegetable garden is not important: it can even range from a few feet on the house roof or balcony to several acres. The first step to take in the organic gardening direction is the purchase of organic seeds that are presently scarce on the market. The problem is that in order to have a real organic vegetable garden, the seeds ought to be free of chemicals or irradiation residues. Therefore, ask around in your town or order them on the Internet.

The benefits of an organic vegetable garden are manifold. Firstly when there are no pesticides or herbicides included in the plant cultivation, the crops remain unaffected by the chemicals, the soil keeps its properties for several years and the creatures living in it will aid to the regeneration of the garden. Furthermore, the organic vegetable garden presents the advantage of dealing with the needs of the family in a very safe, cheap and easy way. In caseone also runs a farm together with the organic vegetable garden, there are even more benefits to it. You should find additional worthwhile info relating to organic vegetable gardening here.

For instance, the profitability and the quality of the crops can be increased by using the manure as a fertilizer. Moreover, everything one needs for an organic vegetable garden should be available from local stores; the costs are definitely not high and the necessary items come for very decent prices. Don’t ignore the tips available in gardening books because lots of the tradition is lost and we need to revive it. Just a relevant example here: think of the fact that corn and beans grown together as very practical; you won’t need any sticks for the beans because they will climb on the corn stalks.

The seeds, the soil and the organic compost will all play an important role in the development of the organic vegetable garden. Do not overlook any of these aspects and your home enterprise will be both successful and rewarding on the long run. You will acquire stacks of extra worthwhile info on vegetable gardening for beginners here.

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You may be feeling the pinch from the recession we are living in so I thought I would share a few tips that will save you some money.

1. Make Your Own Compost

Save the environment and stop sending things to the landfill that don’t need to be going their. I am of course talking about kitchen waste and yard waste that could be composted and used in your garden or containers.

We started composting last year in 2009 and just loved it. Now we don’t spend money on buying compost and additives for the soil, plus we are sending hundreds of pounds less to the landfill so Mother Nature thanks us.

2. Start From Seed

I meant to go this route a couple of years ago but time just sorta slipped away and before we knew it planting time had arrived and all our seeds were still in their neat little packages.

We ended up spending hundreds of dollars on plants. DUH!!

This year I have set aside a room in the basement for my own little nursery and will start as many vegetables and flowers as I can in the space we have.

Think about starting from seed. You will pay less for one pack of sees and get perhaps dozens if not more plants from that pack. So if you paid a dollar for the pack of seeds and grow a dozen plants you saved more than ten dollars right there.

Then, when your plants go to seed you can collect and save those seeds for next year, which saves you even more money. Pretty cool.

3. Start Mulching NOW

We didn’t do any mulching for years in our flower beds and never really thought about, all the time weeding unnecessarily. Not any more…

Now we have started putting mulch around more every plant we have and guess what, it takes far less watering as the water doesn’t evaporate as fast with mulch down.

We also have almost no weeding at all.

Note: put the mulch thick enough that starter shoot from weeds can’t get any light of the mulch won’t work well. I am talking from first hand experience.

4. Start A Vegetable Garden

We did a lot of flower gardening before we finally bought a place big enough that we didn’t have to use containers for everything.

Vegetable gardening is a great way to grow things at home instead of going to the superstore and giving them your money.

We started small with a 4 x 16 foot gardening and had great fun. It didn’t turn into a disaster at all, thanks to veggie gardening tips I have found around the net. Next year we plan to double or triple the garden size.

We plan to grow enough produce this year that we can preserve some for the winter months and save even more money. Our home is an older home and still has a cold room in the basement. Bonus.

5. Buy A Rain Barrel, Cut Down On The Water Bill

It’s a great idea to collect rain water so that you don’t have to use tap water as it takes away from our water table.

Keep a fine mess over the barrel to keep out breeding insects like misquitoes. We just use the same mess/screen that we put on our windows. It’s cheap and does the job perfectly.

Never leave standing water uncovered.

BONUS TIP: Grow herbs both indoors and outdoor so you have fresh herbs all year long. Keep your herbs in containers so that you can have them close to your kitchen if your garden isn’t.