Tips for Expanding Your Vegetable Garden

If you’re a person who wants to be living a healthy lifestyle, it’s important to think about what foods go into your body. Growing fresh vegetables is a great way to get healthy nutrients that you need for your body to function optimally. However, you might end up needing more room for your vegetable garden than you had originally anticipated. If you are thinking about expanding your vegetable garden, try the following tips to get started.

Planning Out Logistics

The first step that you need to do is figure out the logistics of how much expansion room is available. Then, consider which vegetables you are still buying at the store. This will let you know how much land is available for easy expansion or if you need to think about unusual ways to grow more vegetables. For example, you can plant vegetables in decaying hay bales or plant short plants under taller ones.

Tend to Your Fertilizer

Once you figure out where you are expanding, then you need to think through your fertilizer needs. When it comes to fertilizer, dry granule is used mostly for smaller farms and gardens. Most gardens benefit from having manure spread on them in the spring as it provides extra nutrients that the plants need to get started. Granular fertilizer is an option if you are going to grow a small garden, but as you expand, you will want to consider other options. Before you start adding fertilizer, consider getting a soil test done. It can show you exactly which nutrients your soil lacks so that you can add what is needed.

Choose Where to Plant

If you are limited in expansion space, then you may want to reconsider how you are planting your garden. Many plants can be grown close together, and that can help with pest and weed control. For example, growing herbs among your vegetables helps to keep many bugs away because they get confused by the herbs’ odor. Therefore, you may want to plant dill and basil between your tomato plants, and sage among your cabbage plants. You can also plant quick-growing plants, like lettuce and radishes, among those that take longer to mature, like cucumbers and winter squash. In fact, Native Americans usually planted corn, squash, and beans together.

Pay Attention to the Garden’s Exterior

If you often have trouble with rabbits, deer, and other animals eating your vegetables before you get them harvested, then you need to pay particular attention to what you plant on the exterior of your garden. For example, rabbits do not like the smell of Russian sage, so planting it along the edge of your garden naturally repels them from entering. Plants with bristle-like textures naturally deter deer as do many herbs that give off a strong scent.

You can expand your garden by physically making it bigger, or you can expand your garden by being more creative in where you plant each vegetable that you want to grow. Regardless of the method, expanding your vegetable garden will help to make sure that you have plenty of fresh vegetables to eat and incorporate into your healthy lifestyle.

For more gardening tips, check out this article: Natural Ways to Keep Pests Out of Your Garden