For any homeowner, his/her garden is a place of pride. Moreover, if he/she cultivates vegetables in their ‘kitchen garden’. Apart from providing you a good quota of vegetables to cook every season, this activity also keeps you healthy and it’s a great stress reliever too. However, there are quite few issues that can bother any ‘vegetable garden’ owner and that can be anything from soil testing to inadequate water supply and pest control. Read with us to know some tips on how you can maintain your vegetable garden this season.
Tips to Maintain Your Kitchen Garden
01. Plant the Raised Beds
First of all, the beginning of the season itself, test your soil to know whether is there any kind of deficiencies bothering it. Not doing that mean you might have to face problems like discoloured leaves, slow growth, and low yield later on. You can get this done by professionals who are expertise in this field.
Once this process is done, you should ensure that the soil is rich and fertile enough to improve the growth of your kitchen garden. One way in which you can accomplish this is by composing raised beds gardens. Due to the efficient use of spacing and loose, fertile soil, the yield is beneficial in innumerable ways. Moreover, the facility of raised bed gardens also lower your time consumption and reduces the possibility of weeds springing up.
02. Triangle Shaped Planting
If you want to enhance the yield in the best possible way then change the way you plant them. Stay away from planting the yield in rows or square shape. Plant them in a triangle shape and accommodate more plants by following the usual way. However, in such situation, be careful that you are not squeezing the plants too close to each other.
If you keep the plants close, they will not achieve their actual yield capacity. Moreover, too much closeness makes the vegetable plant prone to insect attacks and diseases. These two concerned factors can disturb the improvement of yields.
03. Utilize the Space by Growing Climbing Plants
These days it is irrelevant how much kitchen garden space is provided to you and how to utilize the space efficiently? You should use vertical growing plants like tomatoes, melons, peas, squash, etc. as they save space and provide a good yield too. However, you should take help of fences, stakes, and cages to ensure that the plant stands straight and does not sag in the first attempt, which will also enhance your kitchen garden.
By growing vegetables garden vertically, you also save some valuable space. Since you can see where your fruits are, it is much convenient to harvest and maintain the Kitchen garden (crops) and the chances of having fungal disease will also be reduced. Vines can also be grown on trellises on one side of the raised beds. You be rest assured about the heavy fruits because plants can also grow on strong stems.
04. Time the Crops Suitably
You can divide the growing seasons into parts, and by accomplishing succession planting, you can focus on growing more rather than dividing one crop at a time. This states that you can grow three to four plants and achieve better results from the same kitchen garden. You can even start with single spinach and switch to corns finally finishing off with a bout of garlic.
To grab the advantage of succession planting, transplant a month-old plant which will grow speedily. If you select a fast maturing crop, it would be the best option for yourself and your kitchen garden plants Each time when you plant a crop add a 0.25-0.50 inch layer of compost to the soil which will enhance the soil fertility.
05. Cover the Beds
You can comfortably boost your growing season by following these important and simple steps. According to ‘CPWD – Central Public Word Department of India’ the mulch helps to preserve moisture, moderate soil temperature and control the growth of weeds around shrubs and trees. Therefore, keep the air around the crops, warm with the help of mulch, row covers, cloches, and cold frames. If you want to plant crops like eggplants, peppers, and melons, for an additional boost utilize a set of blankets which would warm the air and soil simultaneously.
8 weeks before, winter preheat the soil using mulch or black plastic because they absorb the heat. When the temperature of the soil is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degree Celsius), set the plants and y now cover the black plastic with the help of some straw such that it traps the excess heat. Once the winters have passed, you can also remove the same and continue gardening the kitchen garden plants.
06. Growing the Plants in Shade
Your production increases when you utilize the space skillfully. While growing any product try to utilize the shady spaces in your kitchen garden too. Lettuce and greens, parsnips and gooseberries and blackcurrants grow better when planted in the shade. Out of these plants choose the ones that you want to grow in your kitchen garden and plant them accordingly.
07. Rainwater Harvesting
The kitchen garden specially for vegetables would need a lot of water for irrigation and the best way is using the method of rainwater harvesting. Rainwater is comparatively softer and has the same pH level that crops usually require. You can also install some additional water barrels to store this water. You can also use connector between them to make the process of irrigation easier for yourself.]
08. Plant Companions
There are few plant combinations which can be beneficial for each other when grown together. For example, you can use corn to support the climbing beans. On the other hand, lettuce with onions or carrots can kill the weeds while the other crops can flourish and grow easily. You can also mix such vegetable plants with flower producing ones which can embellish the look of your kitchen garden.]
Conclusion
Hence, managing a vegetable garden is usually an exhausting task. However, if you follow the tips mentioned above, the time consumption during this work will get reduced to a large extent. Due to which you can use the space and resources and ensure a better yield. Apart from the above, you also have to take care of the weeds and pests that can easily attack your kitchen garden. If you can tackle all these problems there is nothing which can stop your garden from flourishing!
Also Read:
Indoor Plant Care: Tips You Must Know!
Landscape Architecture | Creating A Blissful Outdoor Spaces!
How your Outdoor Patio can Change into your Private Retreat?
Author Bio
Garima Bais – I am a blogger writing on topics like parenting, love, life, beauty and travel. Belonging to a country with a deep heritage India I am an eternal optimist and believe that whatever life gives to you should be taken with gratitude. Do let me know your take on my articles in the form of comments.
