Women's Home Activities

To me Vegetable Gardening is a Homegrown Labor of Love. Although it does take work, the outcomes far outweigh the grief it takes to get started. Vegetable gardening is a great outdoor activity for the whole family to share. What a wonderful family bonding activity and tradition to pass on to your children. Being able to grow your own vegetables enriches your life in numerous ways: healthy eating, exercise, and an accomplishment of a job well done by your own hands!

Ok y’all, I promised in my post about kitchen gadgets that I would fill you in on “the rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey would say, rest his soul). So here goes the story:

Vegetable Gardening – Our Homegrown Labor of Love

My father-in-law is retired, loves to work outside and get his hands in the soil just like he used to when he was a kid growing up on a farm. He lives in the city now and doesn’t have a whole lot of room for planting except for a few pepper and tomato plants. Every year those plants produce dozens of fresh vegetable which he generously shares with us. His vegetable gardening is truly a homegrown labor of love evidenced by the time, effort and care he puts in to growing his own fresh vegetables.

That got me to thinking, hmm… I just wonder if my husband and I could do a little of that ourselves. What a great idea I thought. See we live on a couple of acres in the country. We have all this space, so wouldn’t it be wonderful to grow our own vegetable garden? Now you have to keep in mind that I have not done any vegetable gardening since I was a kid. Even then I was just my own Daddy’s lackey while he did all the real work. As for my husband’s experience in vegetable gardening, well…let’s just say that we were definitely in need of some assistance with the process. So of course I called on the “real farmer” in the family.

Vegetable Gardening: Step 1 – Planning Your Vegetable Garden

Just like in my previous post Starting a Vegetable Garden we started with a plan. Dad sat down with us so that we could figure out a basic layout of the vegetable garden. We decided that since we had the space that we would have a Traditional Vegetable Garden Design. In a traditional vegetable garden plants and seeds are laid out in rows planted directly in the soil. Our plan for the vegetable garden included:

• Where to plant the garden

• How much space we would need

• List of vegetables to plant

• Where to place the plants

Vegetable Gardening: Step 2 – Preparing the Soil for Your Vegetable Garden

Now that we had our basic layout in mind for our vegetable garden the next step was preparing the soil. We had two plots of land designated for our vegetable garden. We picked these areas because they had all the necessary elements for optimal growing:

• Plenty of sunshine

• Water source nearby

• Fairly level

• Fertile soil

In order to break the ground having a good quality garden tiller is really the best way to prepare your soil for planting. My husband, God love him, did the tilling for our vegetable garden. Dad said having a tiller sure beat the old days of using a mule and a plow. The tiller will also help you lay out your rows for the garden. Of course we had to tend to the vegetable garden throughout the growing season but the tiller came in handy again to help keep the rows straight and weed free.

Now that the soil was tilled we used a garden rake to create a smooth seedbed. Dad then took a hoe and dug a little trench to get each row ready to plant. He spread fertilizer in each trench to ensure that the seedlings and plants would get the right amount of nutrients for the growing process.

Vegetable Gardening: Step 3 – Planting Your Vegetable Garden

This is where I thought the real fun part began. I knew that Dad loved digging in the soil but I never dreamed that I would like it just as much. About a week before we started planting I began to pour through vegetable seed catalogs to pick out just what vegetables we wanted to plant.

We picked out the seeds we wanted, plus a few live vegetable plants and some fertilizer. Thankfully our soil is very fertile where we are located so we didn’t need any extra top soil. That is something you may need to keep in mind when evaluating your own soil.

It didn’t take long before we got all the plants and seeds we needed to put in the vegetable garden. Then Dad and I got to planting. He showed me how to set out the rows. The soil depth was fine thanks to hubby’s tilling skills. (6-10 inches is just what you need) We followed our planning guide and started placing the seeds and live plants in their appropriate rows. Dad and I made sure that things were spaced out enough in each row to give the vegetables room to grow. I labeled the rows so I would remember what vegetables had been planted in each row.

Completing Your Vegetable Garden

At that point we had to wait for the fruits of our labor to bear. We checked the garden daily. It is important to tend to the garden after planting to keep it thriving. To me that’s another great part about vegetable gardening. I love walking out to the garden in the evenings, watching the plants grow and picking the crops. It’s a great feeling to know that this activity led to us having our own vegetables grown by our own hands. So you see vegetable gardening is a homegrown labor of love.

Why not get the whole family involved in this wonderful bonding experience? It will certainly be a rewarding event that will leave lasting impressions and time for building memories. Not to mention the healthy benefits that you will provide for your family by growing your own vegetables. Try it for yourself. You just might like it.