Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Size does matter – when planning your garden
Urbanites have joined suburbanites who joined those with some acreage, into the vegetable growing trend. From urban apartment dwellers to folks moving out to hobby farms to community gardens. That’s great but I still want folks to consider SIZE.
My intent is to help you make the best choices so you can fully enjoy your veggie garden. What I don’t want to see happen is people becoming overwhelmed and losing interest.
Keep these things in mind:
- you need (mostly) Full sun. As I’ve talked about before, there are vegetables that grow in part shade but if you want tomatoes/peppers, then you need full sun
- close water source
- close to your home for quick access and ease of maintenance
- how much time can you REALISTICALLY devote to weeding, watering, harvesting
- do you want to share your food with neighbors? Community members?
- do you want to have enough to freeze, can, preserve?
- how much are you willing to let animals have?!?
- how will you prevent critters from munching? Bunnies love beet tops! One year they ate 2 separate plantings till I bought Plantskydd (granules are best, they don’t smell as much, it lasts for 3 months)
Start small, you can always make your garden bigger. The worst thing that can happen is if you start too big, become overwhelmed with weeds and work and abandon your garden. You also don’t want to waste produce. Certainly you can donate to a local food shelf but you also have to have the time to harvest it and don’t deliver inedible produce.
