How to Plant a Vegetable Garden

If you've dreamed of having healthier, readily available fresh foods for your family to eat whenever they'd like, you may have started wondering how to plant a vegetable garden. Planting your very own vegetable garden allows you to control whether harmful chemicals are used on the foods you eat, allows you to have fresh vegetables for cooking or eating raw during harvesting season, and saves you money both in the summer and winter, because you can freeze or can the vegetables you grow and use them throughout the year.

Planting a vegetable garden is not difficult either, but there are a few steps involved. First you have to plan the location of your vegetable garden, then you need to prepare the soil for your vegetable garden, then you will plant your seeds or starter plants. From then on, it's just a matter of caring for your vegetable plants and keeping the weeds away. And before very long you will find yourself outside picking fresh vegetables right off the vine.

Planning your Vegetable Garden

The first thing you'll need to learn about how to plant a vegetable garden, is that location is very important. Vegetables need five to six hours a day of full sunlight, so where you place your vegetable garden plays an important role in how successful that garden will be.

You will also need to plan your space wisely. Depending upon how many vegetables you want to plant, and how much of each vegetable you'd like to be able to harvest, you might find you need quite a bit of room for your vegetable garden. A family of four for instance, generally needs rows of vegetables approximately ten feet long to provide enough harvest for the entire family. So if you want to plant twenty different vegetables, you will need a lot of space.

Vegetable gardens can be planted in containers however, so this might be an alternative option for you to consider. Many vegetables can grow in one container too. Your best bet for the first time planting a vegetable garden is to start small. Choose maybe five vegetables to plant for instance, or try planting smaller amounts of many different vegetables.

Preparing your Soil